Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Remember, remember....

15:36 / 08.10.03

Yay! Bonfire night soon!

Next door neighbours have already started practising blowing up vegetables.

We hold a joint party with the neighbours on both sides every year. It's all very communy, we take down the fences and everything (well to be honest we haven't put them back up since two yeats ago when they became part of the bonfire).

I was hoping for some tips off everyone on....

a) the best fireworks to buy.
b) the best way to make a guy
c) the best way to build a bonfire.
Cheers!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:41 / 08.10.03

I have to say, my youthful love of fireworks have gone, due to the fact that they scare the shit out of my dog, and I can't bear to watch that.

However... I'd recommend (I'm assuming you're in the UK) going to Lewes for Nov. 5th... it's what I intend to do, if I can get the night off work. They have burning oil barrels, people dressed as pirates, all manner of stuff. It sounds GREAT.

Otherwise, the best way to make a guy is... make it up as you go along. Seriously. Get a bunch of you together, and just fucking improvise. That's always best- even if it looks shit, it's much more fun to burn if you can all go "whoah, that was the bit that I fucked up that just went up in smoke!".

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:42 / 08.10.03

addendum pudendum to my previous post...

Or just blow up Parliament. Go on. It'd be a laugh!!!

15:58 / 08.10.03

1. Light blue touchpaper and retire
2. Under no circumstances return to a firework once it has been lit
3. Give the dog a valium
4. Check the location of hibernating tortoises and clandestine hedgehogs before lighting the bonfire
and the other old (Blue Peter) favourite:
5. Never let children handle fireworks
(and that'll be shining bright!)

Enjoy! Give thanks that King James VI&I was saved just in time... There's a commemorative stone in the park along the road that says they hatched the plot and stored the explosives in a house down the way from here.

16:21 / 08.10.03

Yes it can now be told, I was that idiot child who picked up the sparkler by the wrong end after it had burnt out. And I can state that not only are they bloody hot, but they bloody hurt too. Still my grandparents were good enough to look after me for the rest of the night.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:24 / 08.10.03

I still remember, in slow motion no less, a bonfire night party I went to with the Crusaders (a xtian youth group I was a member of at the time- I was about 11) when a sparkler I'd thrown gloriously just missed one of my mate's faces by a matter of millimetres. It was beautiful, and made all the more so by the fact that it was but milliseconds away from being really fucking ugly.

17:25 / 08.10.03

i just learned about this whole weird thing you guys have a couple years ago, and i'm still not over it.
halloween's better.

20:07 / 08.10.03

Otherwise, the best way to make a guy is... make it up as you go along. Seriously. Get a bunch of you together, and just fucking improvise. That's always best- even if it looks shit, it's much more fun to burn if you can all go "whoah, that was the bit that I fucked up that just went up in smoke!".

Yes.

The spirit of a good bonfire night is represented by an evil imagination, an utter disregard for both safety and common sense and the relatively safe collective release of urges which would otherwise lead to fits of arson and vandalism.

The right attitude is approximately - "Look I'm not drunk yet, I know what I'm doing! Give me the matches and.. oh shit! Take cover!"

Obviously organised events where you all have to stand twenty feet away are out of the question, and the truly hardcore can go further in demanding that only homemade or modified fireworks be used.

Oh, and obviously childish pyrotechnic clowning works a lot better in a rural enviroment. Get ye to the countryside for an evening so as to be better able to indulge in ridiculous irresponsibility without risking serious property damage etc.

20:12 / 08.10.03

Curious -- where *do* you get fireworks from?

Italy? China? American made?

Because (as one of the Herald columnists used to point out) it's actually easier to buy guns in some places here than it is to buy decent sparklers.

20:57 / 08.10.03

Curious -- where *do* you get fireworks from?

Here in the UK they are - at times frighteningly - easy to obtain. Just about every Newsagent (of which there are an average of about 3 per main street) sells them, both for a month before November the 5th, and for what seems like six months afterwards. In addition, employees at these public spirited outlets also seem unable to distinguish between the age above and the age below which buyers should be legally allowed to purchase what amounts to high explosive, so bonfire night is always entertaining in the major towns and cities around the country.

And in direct response to - but not solely for the attention of - Stoatie, I heartily recommend the Lewes fireworks and bonfire display. I've been twice since moving to Sussex and it's been bloody great both times.

22:15 / 08.10.03

Yep, 5th of November is already here in Vauxhall. Bangers exploding in the street outside at the back of midnight last night. Oh joy. However, the skies will fill in all directions with a riot of pyrotechnic excess in a few weeks, so it's not all downside.

And why is it a bonfire?

Is there something particularly good about this kind of fire? Although I hate this change of seasons and the intimations of mortality that come with it every year, I am beginning to see (or, rather, smell) the good side as I'm wreathed in woodsmoke from the bonfires in the big, posh gardens on my walk home from work as dead leaves are swept up and incinerated.

23:02 / 08.10.03

As I understand it, it's a corruption of bone-fire—i.e., a funeral pyre.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

23:13 / 08.10.03

OOooooOOOOhhhHHH! I used to love Guy Fawkes' Night so when I was a nipper. Sparklers... jackety spuds... parkin... swearing parents trying to get at least one of the fireworks to light... buring Maggie Thatcher in effigy (or Ronald Reagan, we used to alternate them year on year). I'm all misty-eyed now.

My Nov. 5th tip? Have it somewhere that isn't the UK.

Hey, I should arrange a Guy Fawkes' Night right here in Barca. They love fireworks, and burning dummies. Should go down a treat.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

23:17 / 08.10.03

Oh, yah, and Jack F. has the right of it, IIRC. Bonfire = bone fire, except that it was less of a funeral thang and more of an "Oh, crap, we've got to burn these plague-infested corpses before anyone else gets sick" sort of arrangement.

Anyway. Parkin? No?

23:52 / 08.10.03

Righto! Hows about we all remember that it's my birthday?

Ah, old age approaches.

08:30 / 09.10.03

As opposed to thinking of Guy Fawkes' Night as a celebration of Guy being defeated, I like to think of it as being a celebration of the fact that someone did attempt to blow up the houses of parliament. It seems to make more sense to me, because if we're supposed to be celebrating that someone didn't blow them up, then we might as well celebrate that every day of the year.

I remember that when France was doing nuclear tests, it was their president that seemed to be the most popular for people to want to burn. Wonder who people will want to burn this year.

What I like most is just the standing around in the dark bit, plus sometimes the big booming explosions that light up the sky in an apocalyptic fashion. Although some of the twinkling and crackling pretty fireworks are okay too.

My tip would be to check there are no hedgehogs in your bonfire.

08:39 / 09.10.03

Keep pets inside a sealed tin, at arm's length, and do not return to them after use.

08:56 / 09.10.03

at the lewes festival two years ago the big main 'we hate him' effigy was bin laden. last year it was bush and this year i expect it'll be blair. fire festivals, grrr. good old guy.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:24 / 09.10.03

Sounds like a fair few people may be heading to Lewes this year... I'm desperately trying to get the night off work.

11:11 / 09.10.03

I shall be (a) staying indoors with the windows shut, after some little shit threw a firework into my front room while I was up a ladder painting the walls (window open to let toxic fumes out and explosive devices in) the year before last and set fire to the newspaper on the floor; and (b) not going to Woodhouse, where the children throw lit fireworks at you in the street.

Christ, I hate this time of year.

13:46 / 09.10.03

But who *makes* the fireworks in England?

---

I always though "bonfires" were "bonnie." Goes to show, I guess.

14:20 / 09.10.03

The fireworks we always got when I was a wee one were from China for some reason. However, there are places here in the midlands that make them, as one of them blew its roof off last new year. And the bloody fire brigade put it out! Selfish bastards.
Anyhoo, my Nov 5 tip is - if you're wearing a hooded top, have it up at all times. A lit banger in the hoodie is no funny, I found one year. Present from a mate.

And halloween is not better, as some arsehole imported trick or treating. My tip is to open the door, shout 'This isn't fucking america you know' then retreat to an upstairs window with a urine-filled super-soaker, a bottle of meths, balloons and matches.
Egg my house? I don't think so.

14:28 / 09.10.03

if you are in the southern end of britain, go to lewes. or is it lewis? the town near brighton, anyhow.

they LOVE it, and they even have a procession through the streets; dressed as smugglers and bishops and all sorts of rogueish types.

they also burn folk in effigy, like blair and bush, but the best bit is that they have a gantry with bishops on it, shouting religious nonsense. that you can throw fireworks at. in fact you are encouraged to.

AWESOME.

14:29 / 09.10.03

Bastard politicians BANNED fireworks here in Australia year ago. I'm deeply jealous. Blow up everything in sight I say (perhaps that's just the attitude that lead to the local ban on explosives in the hands of we Oz civilians)

14:40 / 09.10.03

The spirit of a good bonfire night is represented by an evil imagination, an utter disregard for both safety and common sense

And sparklers. Lots of sparklers.

16:21 / 09.10.03

In addition, employees at these public spirited outlets also seem unable to distinguish between the age above and the age below which buyers should be legally allowed to purchase what amounts to high explosive

A school friend of mine was actually used by Trading Standards in a sting operation on various newsagents in my part of the Midlands.

All he had to do was wander in, looking painfully under the legal age, attempt to buy fireworks and report back to the trading standards officer either with a big fat no, or the illegal demolition explosives for them to deal with.

Got on the news too he did, but that's for the other thread