Firework Celebrations

November 5th (or the nearest weekend to it) is when thousands of people in England celebrate ‘Bonfire Night’

In England, this celebration is much, bigger and more widely celebrated that Halloween which, being so close, takes a bit of a back seat to one of the biggest celebrations we have in our yearly calendar.

What follows is a brief history, for the benefit of all my readers who are not sure why we celebrate this event:

In 1605, Guy Fawkes and a group of co-conspirators attempted to blow up King James 1st and the Houses of Parliament, in what has become known as the Gunpowder Plot. Before they were able to carry out their plan they were caught, and subsequently tortured and executed.

Every year since then on November the 5th, we have traditionally celebrated his notorious treasonous Gunpowder Plot failure by letting-off fireworks and burning an effigy of 'Guy' on a bonfire.

In reality, and with the growing popularity of firework displays to mark other private special occasions, the bangs, pops, oohs and aahs start a good week or two before the 5th. Generally, the largest amount of displays will be held on the Friday or Saturday nearest the 5th November.
G and I were invited this year, as last, to J & K’s across the road from us for the celebrations. Everyone thinks that J has an unnatural addiction to blowing things up....

....what do you think, a tad excessive?

Like a little boy at Christmas, he gets so excited, for weeks before the night, at the thought of letting them all go. His long suffering wife will hear the phrase “I’m just going to let one off. Just one, I promise” for many nights running up to the celebrations. It’s like a child in a candy store..lol.

The other thing is that J & K really know how to put a party on. This year it was to be even bigger than last year. The guest list totalled 90 people. The fireworks had been arriving home in batches for several weeks. The oven space of all 3 or 4 invited neighbours had been booked to cook the jacket potatoes and we had each volunteered to make a batch of curry, chilli con carne or tikka masala.

G spent the afternoon helping J to set up the garden and unwrap all the fireworks that he had bought and that which had been purchased by the guests. There was a sturdy ‘rocket launcher’ which would hold 7-8 rockets at a time, to position safely, and the rockets were linked with fuse wire which would then ignite them in quick succession.

A similar, much simpler set of pipes were erected on the opposite side of the garden for the smaller, less powerful rockets, and the catherine wheels were nailed, in a neat little row, to another structure.

There was an old tin bath filled, and a couple of other receptacles each filled with builders sand in which to bury the large ‘cake’ fireworks.

In the name of safety, J had constructed a clear Perspex barrier to separate the spectators from the field of ignition. The hose pipe lay down the length of the garden and buckets of water were placed close at hand.

The garage was taken over for the catering. The entire back wall was a sea of alcohol. To one side there were 5 slow cookers neatly lined up, all simmering away on a low setting and a small glass front warmer in which were some of the many jacket potatoes that had been cooked in preparation. To the other side of the garage was a smaller table, with heated containers in which lurked hotdogs and onions.

I had offered to photograph the whole thing for them. A good memento for them and great practice for me. My current college project is entitled Textures and Patterns, I just know some of the pics are going into it!!

Including J and G there were 4 guys setting up and lighting 8-12 fireworks simultaneously.

There were little ones, though not very many;

and there were big ones.

Then there were the really big ones. The ones that reverberated around the hills and left your ears ringing.

The biggest single firework was a 1000 shot cake. One fuse. One firework. One thousand shots. It was so totally amazing it is indescribable.

Here are a few more of some of my favourite shots. Enjoy.

Note to blogger friends: I may be missing for a short while, will try to check in with your blogs, and will write again as soon as I am able.