The first bang came in August. I know because I was in the garden with a coffee, minding my own business, when something went off on the next street like a small military operation. It was a Tuesday afternoon. It was still light. As far as I could tell, nothing was being celebrated. Since then there has been a bang here, a whistle there, a rocket at ten past nine on a school night, until we’ve arrived in November. Bonfire Night, I’m told, was on Thursday. The big displays are tonight. In between, I’ve lost track of which night it is.
It used to be an event. Now it’s a season, like the Christmas adverts and the hot cross buns, creeping a little further forward every year.
Meanwhile, the dog has had enough. He’s been under the table since about eight o’clock, wearing the expression of a man who has just read the small print on a contract. Every bang earns a long, hurt look in my direction, as if I had organised it personally. I’ve explained that I didn’t. He doesn’t believe me. I’ve put the radio on, drawn the curtains and sat on the floor beside him like an idiot, and he has still given the whole evening zero stars.
When I was a boy, Bonfire Night was one night, and we waited for it all year. The display was a small, local affair in the field behind the church hall, run by men in hats with a bucket, a clipboard and the confidence of people who had done it before, although nobody could prove it. The bonfire was a heap of pallets and old doors. The fireworks lasted about eleven minutes, of which three were somebody explaining where to stand.
At home, we had sparklers. One packet. Between six of us. You got one at a time, in strict order, with Dad supervising as though it were the crown jewels, and we wrote our names in the dark with a reverence we never managed again until our school exams. If you got the last one, you held a few inches of glowing wire, and you would have fought a bear for it.
Then there was the firework. There was always one. Dad would have bought a box weeks before and kept it, with great optimism, in the shed, where it spent a month absorbing every drop of damp in the county. On the night, he would kneel in the garden in his overcoat with a torch in his teeth and a box of matches. Strike. Fizzle. Strike. Nothing. It took him twenty minutes with that one rocket, while the rest of us stamped our feet and said it didn’t matter, which of course it did. Then, finally, a hiss, a pop and a wobbly, dignified fountain of sparks about eight inches tall. The cheer was out of all proportion. You would have thought he had landed a man on the moon.
I’ll admit the big displays today are magnificent. I have stood at a few with my mouth open, watching the sky do things I couldn’t have imagined as a child. And I’m not blameless. I have inherited the shed, and the shed has inherited the damp. Somewhere in there is a box of family assorted fireworks I’ve never lit. Some traditions run in the blood.
But it isn’t the fireworks I remember. It’s the warmth of it. Everyone standing in the same cold field in bobble hats and wellies, steaming gently in the dark with a paper cup of something hot, and woodsmoke in your coat for days afterwards. And Dad, covered in spent matches, getting that one rocket to go, and the whole garden cheering him on.
So go tonight. Wrap up, take a flask and hold a small hand. If somebody offers you a sparkler, write your name in the dark. And when you get home, spare a thought for the dog. Sit with him for a while with the radio on. He’ll forgive you by Sunday.
Anyway, what do I know?
I’m just a grumpy old man.
Go on then, what’s yours? Tell me your best Bonfire Night memory, or the worst damp firework you’ve ever seen.
