It took us over two and half hours to get down to Southampton from Cambridge in the pouring rain. (We had seen the new James Bond in the morning in Cambridge first -- it came out in England two weeks before it did in the U.S.) I was unconvinced that fireworks and bonfire would actually be happening in all the wetness, but I decided to wait and see. I didn't have a raincoat (Nick's fault) but instead just had a warm down coat.
Now the deal with Guy Fawkes Night in England is that they're celebrating the fact that he failed to blow up Parliament centuries ago by, apparently, successfully blowing things up? That seems to be the gist of it, anyways. So while it is officially celebrated on November 5th, there seems to be a several-week-long period of all sorts of fire- and explosion-related injuries all across England.
When we got to Jen's parents' house, it was still definitely raining, so we milled around inside with everyone. Jen mentioned that she spent an afternoon looking at my Facebook photos where every time she finished an album another one showed up. Eventually, though, the rain slowed and we headed outside to light the bonfire. Nick gave me his warm waterproof to put on over my down jacket and got by with just a scruffy old not-very-waterproof coat. The bonfire had been kept dry all week by having a tarp placed over it, and Jen's parents had set up other various tarps around the garden for us to stand under out of the rain, so that all went according to plan. Jen's parents even had a Guy Fawkes effigy to burn atop the bonfire in proper style.
The bonfire actually was extremely warm -- but seemed to be getting a little close to the fence behind it (which ended up slightly blackened by the end of the night). Apparently this was an improvement over last year, though, when a section of the fence burned down.
As Jen's parents made dinner, Nick began setting off some of the many, many fireworks that we had for the night. Apparently, Jen's father had specifically requested Nick for this year because he has done "such a good job" of "responsibly" setting off fireworks in past years. According to Nick. There appears to be a low bar there, though -- according to lore, in past years, Sven-from-OUMC once accidentally shot a firework directly at the side of Jen's parents' house, and another Jen-relative once stuck a rocket in the ground that was supposed to shoot up, meaning that it got stuck, went off at ground level, and made everyone dive for cover as it went off like a bomb.
So Nick began setting off fireworks. Most of them were relatively low-key. There were small ones that went off at ground level (on purpose) that shot off colored sparks in a relatively contained manner. There were ones that popped way up into the air but didn't do much once up there. There were also ones that could be hammered to the fence that went off while spinning around in a circle (which again seems like it should be pretty dangerous). I started off by holding a sparkler, which seemed like plenty for me.
Eventually, with about half the fireworks gone, the bonfire died down and we went in for dinner, which was a buffet style thing with chili and cheesy jackets, which Nick ate a lot of.
After dinner, it was time to head outside for more fireworks. Nick taught me to set off a few of the ground-level ones in the little flower pot, which went well for me -- now the initial sparklers seemed a lot less scary. Meanwhile, Nick learned a tough lesson of his own at the time. We were keeping the fireworks in a greenhouse right next to the flowerpart staging area. In all the fireworks instructions, they specifically said to bury these fireworks before they went off, but Nick decided that that was not that important a suggestion -- kind of like the one to not drink alcohol while setting them off.
So anyways, one of the fireworks that we had was some sort of "seven shot" thing. It shot up little balls way into the sky, and did it one at a time with a second or two in between each one as it burned down. This one got to about shot number four when it started wobbling. It wobbled more and more drastically with shot five, and then, after shot six, it tipped over entirely and aimed straight at the greenhouse. Nick, Andy, Will, and Tim all quickly ran away -- as it fired its last shot directly into the greenhouse.
Somehow it didn't manage to set off any of the gazillion other fireworks in the greenhouse, and didn't even manage to make an exit hole (that we could find, anyway). However, there was definitely a broken pane of glass from the entrance hole. At that point, Nick learned to bury the fireworks better.
Eventually we moved on to some of the bigger fireworks. There were "rockets" that got placed into tubes, and lit, and then the rockets themselves shot up to the sky while the tubes stayed on the ground (this was the type that had exploded years before when a relative had stuck the rocket directly into the ground sans tube, and it hadn't been able to escape).
Finally, we got to some of the big boxes, of which we had a couple. These actually shot real, big bang fireworks up into the sky. By this point, I was used to lighting them and actually lit one of the big bang fireworks myself. Below are pictures of the firework that I, personally, set off.
The still-smoking aftermath:
So that was all pretty exciting and fun! Besides Nick breaking the greenhouse, I managed to have the muddiest shoes of everyone and got mud all over the kitchen -- which then got onto Jen's socks. I'm not sure how they got so muddy. Picture of them 24 hours after the fact:
So that was our adventure! Additionally, we may be going to another fireworks party this upcoming Saturday -- so who knows what sort of carnage that one will result in.
2 comments:
We used to have small 7 shot things we called "Roman Candles". it was actually safest to hold them in your hand and point the open end of the tube at whatever (whoever) you wanted to shoot at.
I just told this to Nick and he said that when he saw this one start to wobble he considered going over to grab it. Interesting instincts.
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