I do love decent fireworks.
There were two lots here this evening, both connected with a wedding earlier in the day which I disgracefully failed to turn up to. A good half hour or forty minutes of visual and aural drama all told.
The first lot were attached to a sort of bull effigy which was set on fire. The second lot were in a nearby field. The clamour and flashes and showers of bright sparks filling the sky, the howlers and whistlers visible and invisible, right down to the three bright flashes and loud reports at the end, fabulous in my book, never fail to make me smile. I'm a simple soul, always was.
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>>The clamour and flashes and showers of bright sparks filling the sky, the howlers and whistlers visible and invisible, right down to the three bright flashes and loud reports at the end
I do hope you don't reincarnate as a dog.
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>> I do hope you don't reincarnate as a dog.
I don't need to Perro. I can howl at the moon as well as the next creature.
Must have a glance outside to see how the slightly pregnant half moon is doing. Chilly so perhaps clear.
No, a bit murky, moon and nothing else. How annoying.
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I'll be out there myself in an hours time, walking the dog for half an hour. I don't quite howl at the moon, but I walk in the middle of a road which, although quite busy in the daytime, is virtually traffic free at night time.
Who do I walk down the middle of the road? .. because there are no pavements in this area and, being in the middle of the road, I can dart to my left or right a bit sharpish like, if a car comes flying down the road with main beams a' blazing (my ole mum used to say there are more out than in!)
:o}
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There's a local gossipy forum on which I occasionally drop in. it seems to mainly consist of moaners and the politically correct. Longest thread recently was people whinging about the fireworks, the effect on their animals and general agreement that if they must take place then it should be restricted to 2 nights a year.
Having been involved in running organised displays for many years I personally no longer need to see them but a good display is always fun. However the local one went on too long this year by all accounts - 40 solid firework minutes!! People don't have long attention spans these days :-)
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>> a wedding earlier in the day which I disgracefully failed to turn up to
I had a couple of them at one of my daughter's nuptials. I'd loved to have billed them for the cost, but higher authority (swmbo) curtailed me.
May a thousand fleas infest your armpits!
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There was lad caught by Police in Bangor few weeks ago. He had opened up a firework and was nicked in the process of snorting the gun-powdery stuff. They let him off though.
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Worst.
Joke.
Ever.
I do, however, remember slicing open bangers and minirockets when I was of school age and collecting the gunpowder for ever more retarded japes...
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And me. Sadly there was a bout of sillyness around 20 years ago as well. had right larf we did..."someone" put a lighted banger through the office letter box. unfortunately it had a built in fire extinguisher....I know who did it though (well a good suspicion)...it stopped after that
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We used to buy the biggest rockets possible and embed a launch tube in the ground at whatever angle seemed appropriate on the night. Bit like Artillery or so we thought in our yoof. Happy days.
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We used to "borrow" the local farmer's crow scarer bangers.
They gave a far better bang than the bangers you bought over the counter from the supermarkets - with the added bonus of being free ;)
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>> I do, however, remember slicing open bangers and minirockets when I was of school age and collecting the gunpowder for ever more retarded japes...
Not as retarded as mine at age 10 in Ceylon where cheap firecrackers were available. There was a steel pipe that went right through a block of concrete, just small enough to be heaved about by a child, that could be used as a gun, with some local fruit as a projectile. You stuffed the fruit in, followed it with a lit cracker and quickly covered the breech end with a piece of wood.
The fuses were a bit short sometimes and my fingers got a bit stung... However I still have them all.
The crackers were hand-made out of newspaper mostly. There was a smaller sort, suitable for toy pistols etc.
I once spent a large sum of money (for me) on a huge banger with a long fuse. But it was a damp squib, just went pop. Perhaps I shouldn't have piled earth around it hoping for a big dust-cloud.
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I (mostly) stopped after shooting a hole through my mate's dad's garage roof where we were experimenting with copper pipe and marbles...
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Depth charges were great fun. Tie a banger on to a brick, light it and wait till it starts fizzing and throw it in the pond. Didn't do much for the fish though.
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Roman candles, the ones with wooden handles. We use dot have duels shooting fiery balls at one another.
Its a wonder any of us are still alive
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Aerosol cans chucked on a fire can be pretty good. Best if the fire is outside though.
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Went fishing some decades ago and took a heroic amount of alcohol with us.
By 3am we were guttered but still had a full bottle of scotch (Bells or Grouse, or somesuch - no great loss!) that none of us fancied.
Into the fire it went.
After 3 or 4 minutes the amber nectar could seen starting to bubble inside the bottle.
A minute or so later the cap popped a little hole and a jet of flame 5 or 6 inches long popped out, like the flare on an oil rig.
After another minute or so watching this 'we' decided nothing more fun was likely so a fist-sized rock was tossed onto the bottle from a safe distance.
Result? The bottle exploded like a 12-gauge going off and the entire fire was blown to smithereens with the remants as little red stars glowing in the undergrowth to a radius of perhaps 20 yards.
As Zero says, it's a wonder any of us are still alive.
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Last edited by: Dog on Sun 22 Nov 15 at 20:05
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Favourite trick back in the good old days of preserved railways (before it became over-sanitised) was to obtain a fog detonator and, onthe way back from the pub on Saturday night, drop it down the chimney of the lean-to cabin on the side of the loco-shed, wherein was a pot stove which simmered through the night to keep sleeping train crews warm.
You had about ten to fifteen seconds to scuttle back to the relative safety of the signal and telegraph gang's bunkhouse if you didn't want to get lynched by irate drivers and firemen.
That sort of thing simply doesn't happen any more since getting caught trackside with even a hint of residual alcohol in your body means you get kicked off the site. Done for a good reason of course but the rule of unintended consequences means that the social side of railway preservation, which was what attracted many, has died.
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>> Done for a good reason of course but the rule of unintended consequences means that
>> the social side of railway preservation, which was what attracted many, has died.
It was discovered that trains kill people on preserved railways as well.
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I don't have personal experience of this but I'm from an ex-mining community and my old man told me, as a lad, he would get calcium carbide (used in mining lamps as it gives off acetylene gas when water is added to it) and toss a handful in the drains outside the houses.
After 5 minutes a match thrown into the drain outside his terrace would cause an almighty bang and large jet of flame to erupt.
He stopped doing it after one jape ended with the contents of a couple of neighbours kitchen sinks being blown all over their kitchens.
It's genetic I tells ya.
Last edited by: Lygonos on Sun 22 Nov 15 at 22:58
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>
>> It was discovered that trains kill people on preserved railways as well.
>>
Absolutely no doubt about that Z; I sometimes think it's a wonder there's not more folk injured or killed, some of the things the public (and I don't just mean gricers) get up to.
I blame that Awdry bloke. Steam locomotives are many things but cute and cuddly they ain't.
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>> Not as retarded as mine at age 10 in Ceylon where cheap firecrackers were available
The kitchen and servants' rooms were in a separate building from the house. Cooking was done on an old-fashioned iron range, wood-fired. I once tossed a couple of firecrackers into this stove as a jape, but the cook became so furious that I never dared do it again. His polemic was in a language I didn't know, but what it meant was only too clear... oo-er!
The people who worked for us - there were only three - were pretty kind and tolerant with me. I imagine my parents were reasonably good employers, non-racist and with a sense of justice.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Wed 25 Nov 15 at 17:38
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I'm a bit envious of Lygonos's copper tube and marble gun, a hole in the garage roof... chapeau!
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>> There was lad caught by Police in Bangor few weeks ago. He had opened up
>> a firework and was nicked in the process of snorting the gun-powdery stuff. They let
>> him off though.
>>
As a teenager, I opened them up and kept emptying the gunpowder from fireworks into a used marine rocket - which was very big. When filled attached a LONG fuse, lit it and ran away about 50 meters.
Big mistake. Never packed the gunpowder tight so it all went of with the biggest bang I had ever heard. Deaf for 30 minutes or so..
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Feux de joie - Dog
