Memories of a 1980’s Bonfire Night

Since the clocks changed a week or so ago, the post school sky has been hurtling to jet with every flicking tick and tock.

I amaze myself with puffs of my own nine year old breath. ‘Again!’ I will my lungs and mouth, as my lips expel phantom chalk to swirl as smoke, before disappearing into the ether.

Only days ago it was Halloween and I bobbed for apples in a washing up bowl at a youth club party. Sometimes they hang apples up on string and we have to try and take a bite. I love Halloween parties but am never allowed one of the fancy masks I really want. The rubbery ones ones that look like something from Jim Henson’s workshop.

“I’m not paying all that for a mask!”

My mum says every year without fail.

I do however, get a much cheaper mask, a witches hat and a swede to carve. ‘Trick or Treat’ has not yet taken off as the over hyped plastic fest it will become. This is 1983. Until we saw ‘ET’ last year, most of us children hadn’t even heard of it.

The 5th of November is, for us British kids, where the real story is at.

Guy Fawkes Night. 

There are huge organised events in every town. I beg my mum to take me to each and every one in the vicinity.  Some have funfairs that roll up as slices of fairyland dripping November with their delicious jewel, whilst blaring out their loud pop music. Others, boast large firework displays or the biggest fire. At all of them, there are clouds of pink candy floss and shiny red toffee apples.

But my favourite event, is always the Bonfire in the field at the back of my house. The small, understated, neighbourhood gathering.

Why? Because it’s the one I personally contribute to.

What it lacks in grandeur, it makes up for in ‘roll your sleeves up’ community spirit. Before the days of ‘health and safety’, when jobsworths had something to say about anything and everything, it was up to families to police, promote and provide. And somehow, without taping off, tannoys and fences…..we made it work.

The Fire Brigade were in our school only a couple of weeks ago to preach the dangers of fireworks. Sometimes we get ‘Welephant’ the friendly red elephant mascot, other times it is deemed more effective to scare us into sensible behaviour with terrifying videos.

“Don’t fool with fireworks” the sinister voice advises.

But by far the most effective deterrent we could possibly have is our poor class mate. Every year, Christian is asked to stand up in school assembly as real life example of how things can go horribly wrong. He ‘fooled with fire works’ and now pays the price as a Simon Weston in miniature.

I can’t help feel sorry for the boy, all eyes surveying his tight, shiny, pig like stretched skin.  Although he is very agreeable about it, there’s something a little ‘Elephant Man’ about the matter as our school mate is exhibited as ghoulish warning.

“Can we borrow the wheelbarrow, mum?”

I ask, in the garage a few days before the big night.

There’s a sigh.

“Why is it always us? Surely somebody else has a wheel barrow? What do you want it for?”

“We need it for Penny for the Guy. We need something to push him round in….”

I explain.

“Oh! You’re going cob coaling!”

She says,  bursting into a ditty that sounds like something not out of place in another century, yet in truth would have been commonly sang locally just 30 years ago.

“Pepper pot, pepper pot!”

She trills, her voice Hilda Ogdening up in scale with fondness.

I absorb her song as though listening to a quaint snippet of ‘How we used to live’ at school, my puzzled face wondering what on earth ‘pepper pots’ have to do with bonfires and why it sounds more like a twee Christmas Carol rather than an obvious plea for cash.  Still, her trip down memory lane is doing the trick, she is softening.

Her nostalgic heart lit brightly as a jack o lantern, she relents. The old rusty wheel barrow is now ours for the evening!

‘Penny for the Guy’ in these parts, is a rite of passage. The older lads in the neighbourhood are in charge of it. For weeks they have hunted and scavenged their wood, guarding their piles from rival gangs, like golden eagles.

It is quite an honour to be asked to go out collecting with the big boys. Quite rightly, they don’t want any whiny babies tagging along with them as they knock on doors in the pitch dark asking for money that will  eventually fund fireworks we all can enjoy.  We also ask for last minute pieces of firewood. This is the early 80’s and there is no ‘responsible adult’ with us, vetting and sanitising. It feels feral. We are a pack, instinctively looking out for each other and figuring out the doors too weird to knock on.

Our ‘Guy’ is similar in appearance to a stuffed scarecrow. Between us, we have scrounged various rags to clothe him in. An old grandad shirt, pair of black trousers.  He is stuffed with newspaper and there’s a crude attempt at a papier-mâché head.

His name is never ‘Guy’ but changed to fit that of our most hated adversary. Channelling both ‘Lord Of The Flies’ and ‘The Wicker Man’ we talk about the joy we we will feel watching this enemy efigie burn. There’s something about being in the dark with a gang of your mates that changes even the most mild mannered Anne of Green Gables or Little Lord Fauntleroy into a slightly more wicked version of themself. A Gremlin underbelly surfaces as we practice wearing our looming adolescence as unearned badge, cutting our teeth on dares and knock-a-door-runs.

At this point, some history buff will usually remind us that burning the Guy is tame stuff compared to what happened to the real Guy Fawkes.  In later years, this will no doubt inspire young Hayden to form a metal band he calls ‘Hung, Drawn and Quartered’.

At last, our man is ready to be wheeled around the estate. We parade our wheelbarrow in a manner not disimilar to proud parents with a new Silver Cross.

Doors are opened and sometimes not.

“Penny for the Guy!”

We yell enthusiastically in unison.

Some householders offer coins, others wood or newspapers. Sometimes we leave empty handed.

Every few doors, our Guy is positioned that bit higher, a slightly more worthy king of the castle.

Finally, it is declared the quest is over. We have either collected sufficient money for a decent box of fireworks or else the barrow is too heavy with wood to push. We head home.

Just a few nights later, November 5th arrives.

The field is transformed into makeshift party venue and gunpowder is well and truly in the air.  It’s a smell even more pungent than the slight smoking of my brother’s cap gun, those rosy blisters on a reel I love so much.

Each mother or grandmother has prepared a culinary offering. There are trays of parkin and treacle toffee is hammer smashed into bite sized shards.  The bottom of the bonfire is home to jacket potatoes wrapped in foil, ready to be poked out tentatively with sticks later.  My mum makes the Lancashire delicacy ‘Black Peas’. She has cooked a huge pan of them waiting to be ladeled into cups and liberally doused with salt and vinegar.

As we await the firework display, we whet our appetite on sparklers. There are giant ones, coloured ones, silver ones. Mine is lit and I scribe my name into the jam of night. There’s something mesmerising about the way the sky scaffolds each letter. For a few seconds, I am a Hollywood star, ‘Julie’ holding its own in neon, sparks jumping and sizzling. Once it has burned out, the stick is plunged, redundant into cold earth.

Gender roles are very much adhered to at our community display. Just as females provide the food, the dangerous job of lighting the fireworks largely falls to the fathers. Mine is nowhere to be seen of course, but I watch contentedly as my favourite neighbourhood dads assert their status, nailing down Catherine wheels and shooing away curious little ones as fuses are lit. There’s always some older boy given apprentice status in such proceedings. He will reliably remove each firework out from box and pass to the adult, taking his role incredibly seriously and enjoying the temporary power he holds.

And then, all heads are held to heaven. As our heads are sky bound, my mum will diligently and accurately name every firework from the trusty Standard box, as it finds its glittery form.

“This….. is Traffic Lights. Watch….it’s going to turn all three colours, red, amber, green….”

“Yes!”

“This……is Golden Rain!”

“Yes!”

“This….. is Snow Storm!”

Sometimes we wait and the moment does not come. It’s a ‘dud’ or too damp; “don’t go back to light it though!”. Not to worry, there are plenty more.

As the evening goes on, the more expensive fireworks are launched, massive rockets that whee and whizz can be visibly be seen shooting up.

As each bang peters out; popcorn in a microwave and we watch our crisp navy eve sloth into a broth of grey, there is a worrying moment of “Is that it?”.

Alas not! This is a deliberate pause to build drama before one great extravaganza.

A few ‘support acts’ rise in accompaniment and then, that one final showstopping firework. The one that does it all - bangs, pops, whizzes, changes colour. It spreads so wide and far you’re sure it may find its way on to your shoulder like a falling meteorite. But no. It is eaten. By what? Space? Night?

It’s over.

The lights have stopped dancing, the crowd have stopped oohing. Eyes shrink back from saucers into their sockets.

Gloves in mittens, satisfied for yet another year, we head home, our scarves fragrant with woodsmoke, bellies full on food made with love, our hearts alive with wonder.

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