Hughes Monica - Bonfire Night

BonfireNight

by

Peter Knowles

Bonfire Night

Copyright 2010 PeterKnowles

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Fiction

It was coming up toBonfire Night and as soon as the shops had fireworks for sale thenall our money got spent on Penny Bangers, Sky Rockets, RomanCandles and Jumping Crackers and of course the obligatory pennybook of matches to light them with.

No, in those days youdidnt need to be of a certain age to buy them, the shopkeepercould sell to anyone.

We didnt get into thatmuch trouble with the fireworks. Honest we didnt and like all kidswe never saw the danger in these things, they were just another wayof having fun.

Throwing the jumpingcrackers at girls feet and laughing while they screamed out loud,skipped and jumped about trying to get away from them, which wasalways in vain, because the cracker always seem to jump in the samedirection that the girls did. How did the crackers know which waythe girls were going to jump?

Now the Penny Bangers,the Sky Rockets and Roman Candles were a different matter, theywere our ammunition, our way of wagering war.

Then there was the otherside of Bonfire Night, Bunny Wooding, the collecting of basicallyanything that would burn, but to make the bonfire last longer weneeded logs because everything else, rubbish, old furniture andmost other things burnt too fast and the only place to get logs wasby chopping down trees in Burkes Wood which was owned by the localfarmer and private land with signs that read Trespassers will beshot, but that didnt scare us, we needed the logs.

On one of these bunnywooding expeditions, the Lad borrowed without asking, his dads axeand saw from his tool box.

He sat half way up amassive tree hacking away at one of the thickest branches; thesound could be heard for miles echoing around the wood disturbingall the wildlife.

Timber shouted the Ladwhen the branch finally plummeted to the ground.

Burke I shouted,noticing first his dogs then Burke himself advancing over the hilltowards the wood.

Who you calling a berkshouted the Lad who was still up the tree.

Not you, the farmer,hes coming this way, quick run I shouted back.

There was a loud bangfrom the farmers shotgun being fired into the air to scare us andwe could hear the sound of his dogs barking gettingcloser.

Oh! Heck replied theLad, falling more than climbing back down the tree then jumping thelast ten feet or so and hitting the ground with one hell of a bump,he picking himself up grabbed the saw and the branch he had justchopped down he set off trying to run, struggling to drag thebranch behind him, he wasnt going to leave it for love normoney.

We managed to get awayand triumphantly he dragged his trophy through the streets to thebonfire site, which was when he realised he hadnt got his dadsaxe.

Have you got the axe?he asked.

No you had it up thetree I replied.

Oh! No, Ive left itstuck in the tree, my dad will kill me he said.

He replaced the saw backin the tool box and decided that the best thing to do was to keephis mouth shut and if his dad asked where the axe was he would denyall knowledge of knowing anything about it.

After a while he thoughthe had got away with it, his dad never asked about the axe, it hadbeen a good plan until one day his mother told him he had to stayin until his dad got home from work.

All hell broke loose whenhis dad arrived home and produced the axe from the cupboard underthe kitchen sink where the tool box was stored.

How did the farmer knowwhos axe it was, well what the Lad hadnt noticed at the time was,It had his address burnt into the wooden handle.

When all the fuel for thefire was found, begged, stolen and borrowed it was piled up on thefield near the colliery ready for the big night, once there we hadto stand guard over it and a camp was always made in the middle sowe could keep warm and shelter from the rain, we would stay untillate at night or at least until we thought that the rival gangs inthe area had gone home and wouldnt steal our wood or even set fireto it.

The competition wasfierce and this is where the Bangers, Rockets and Roman Candlescame into it.

The Bangers were thrownlike hand grenades, sometimes half a dozen held together with anelastic band, this method depended on how low our stock ofammunition was, now that made one hell of a bang, the Rockets couldalso be thrown, though we didnt have very much control over wherethey would fly and sometimes they would do a U-turn and fly back atus also you had to throw them before they started fizzing or yougot burnt, the best way was to place them in a bit of old metaltubing stuck into the ground at a very low level so that when itwent off in would fly about two feet off the ground straight at theenemy before exploding in a bright ball of fire, the Roman Candleswere better, they could be aimed by using another piece of metaltubing with the end flattened and bent into the shape of a gun,holding the bent end and a Roman Candle was pushed into the openend of the tube, lit and pointed in the direction you wanted thefireballs to fly in.

Enemy shouted the Lad,letting off a rocket into the darkness which skimmed the ground andbounced at the feet of a group of lads running towards us before itburst into a ball of fire.

Charge shouted avoice.

Get them, burn theirbunny wood cried out another.

With bangers being thrownand exploding in all directions and the Lad stood like a war hero,holding the bent metal tube at arms length, with a Roman Candlestuck in the end firing fire balls at them, sometimes hitting morethan one, it was like a battle zone and a miracle that no one gotseriously burned, eventually the enemy retreated and all fellsilent again.

Thatll show them saidthe Lad, blowing the smoke off the end of the barrel of his gunlike some Wild West cowboy.

Anyone wounded? Ishouted like the commanding officer of some elite fightingunit.

The next night weattacked them and successfully managed to set fire to their bunnywood with a well aimed rocket, victorious we returned to our owncamp to find that someone had nicked two of our best logs, we hadleft Peapod on guard to defend it while we were away but there wasno sign of him, he must have run off, when we did meet up with himthe next day he said we were taking too long and thought we werentcoming back so he went home, no one believed him, we would havebeen better off leaving Rita to defend the camp but she was ourbest grenade thrower and was needed for the battle, well at leastwe were the winners, two logs versus a whole bonfire, nocontest.

The night before Bonfirenight was another great occasion mischievous night where we wouldroam around playing pranks on everyone and anyone. We didnt causeany damage, well at least I dont think we did and we didnt hurtany animals, unlike two lads we came across who were trying to tiea jumping cracker to a cats tail.

The Lad grabbed the frontof each of their jackets one in each hand and threatened what hewould do to them if they didnt let the cat go, they started toargue with him so he let him go of them, I was thinking he wasgoing to fight them but instead he lit a banger telling one of themhe would shoved it up his arse and see how he liked it, they soonlet the cat go, throwing the banger to one side just before it wentoff we watched the two lads run away.