Fireworks

Fireworks ©

By Michael Casey

Well its very noisy outside, its Guy Fawkes Night, 5^th November, which is when here in UK we have fireworks and bonfires, in our own back yards and at public displays. As kids you’d stuff an old pair of trousers and a shirt with paper, add a face mask made of cardboard, and then beg on the street “Penny for the Guy” any money collected being used to buy fireworks.

You were under age to buy fireworks but that did not matter. Sometimes a child would just wear the face mask and try and get money without having first made the guy. A bonfire would be built at the bottom of your garden and once it got dark you would set fire to it.

Making our guy one year I noticed we had some newspaper on top of a high old dresser in our old coal shed. So I reached up and grabbed the paper, sliding to me, only there was a lump of iron on top of the paper, and old single burner with oven gas cooker. This came crashing down and hit me on the head, I was bleeding.

I went inside to my mum who immediately wrapped a tea towel on my head, so I looked like an Indian, with blood coming from my head through the tea towel. 

Then we caught the bus to the hospital. I was Xrayed but other than that I was soon discharged. I still have a little lump on my scalp nearly 50 years later. I don’t know was my skull fractured or what, though some of you may be thinking that explains a  few things, you are so cruel, and I will get you all at playtime, so you better hide behind the bike sheds.

Around the same time Derek my best friend, encouraged me to hold a firework while he lit it, so I did and it was ok, until the afterglow sensation of fire in the palm of my hand. Nowadays my fingers would have come off and I’d have a hole through my palm. When you are young and stupid you don’t think of these things, just tell your kids never to even think of being so stupid.

Fast forward 30 years and I’m in Shanghai and its Chinese New Year, you cannot possibly imagine the scale of fireworks. It’s more like a Revolution or an Invasion, just looking out the windows the amount and scale of fireworks that ordinary people are setting off is/was unbelievable. What we used to have in parks at public displays here in Birmingham was dwarfed by what little old ladies and their grandkids were exploding into the sky in Shanghai.

Obviously the food and fireworks were more fun in Shanghai, but Bonfire Night did have a certain innocence to it. Sparklers were great fun but they do get very very hot so you must wear thick gloves if you are going to hold them. Me and my brother saved up some money and bought a great big banger from the old bike shop which sold fireworks once a year, next door to the Gem fish and chip shop and the old Grove cinema.

We hurried home that Sunday morning after serving the early morning Mass, we were going to light our banger, only we could not get it to light no matter how hard we tried. You see it had a plastic cap on top of the fuse only we were too young and too stupid to realise it. My brother went on to Cambridge 6 years later and as for me I’m just a writer.

Finally we dropped the firework and the cover fell off the paper fuse. So we lit the firework and threw it into an old dustbin, in them days they were metal and very heavy, that’s why bin-men were so strong in them days. The explosion was amazing, and we could have both joined the Arms Race, but we didn’t. So we then went inside the house for our post Mass breakfast, as you have to fast before Communion.

All was now silent in our garden, apart from the local squirrels who were now deaf and thinking of grabbing their nuts and moving somewhere quieter. And that’s  where I was going to begin tonight, with a moment of silence, instead these 700 words or so have filled the page. Which goes to show my words lead me, I do not lead them, but I hope you all enjoy where the path takes us. Goodnight and let us pray Peace Breaks Out Everywhere, and then the world can have its era of silence.