Up in Smoke!

 It's hard to believe that these complex objects are fireworks from 1987! 

Rockets and shuttles.

I've never seen fireworks like these.

You?

Bommy Night

 Once huge in the UK, Bonfire or Bommy night has suffered the censoring scissors of health and safety, as fireworks have became more difficult for kids to buy themselves and burns and injury became an increasing problem during the 60's, 70's and 80's.

Now it's a fiery footnote to a much bigger Halloween here in Britain.

Still, when I was a kid, boomer bonfire nights were very special. None of the cordoned organised council fires we have now, most families lit a pile of timber in their own back gardens or streets back then.

The poor old guy was chucked onto the flames in an act of patriotic fervour, mostly lost on us kids, who, after hawking it round the neighbourhood or sitting with it asking for firework pennies, simply wanted to see it burn and eat some grub.

Food around the fire was mostly rustic but delicious fayre like toffee apples, pork pie and peas and bags of rock hard teeth-shattering bonfire toffee, which I still adore.

The highlight of the dark evening was the firework display of snowcones and roman candles, usually supervised by Dad and often the Standard brand, who ran a very catchy TV ad campaign, which British kids of our generation will no doubt be humming to themselves at some point today:

"Do you remember the fifth of November?

Light up the Sky with Standard Fireworks!"

As I write this post with my imaginary sparkler, what are you doing this Bonfire Night readers? 

🧨

ROCKETS AWAY! KEV'S NEW THUNDERBIRD 1 LAUNCH BAY

Hi,

Got this AIP kit of the Thunderbird 1 launch bay. My local model shop had a window display of Thunderbirds kits in 2021!

It needed a lot of work, I made a new floor, roof, side ramp and observation room! I also added lights.

Pleased with it though.

Thunderbirds are go,

Kevin

UK

STAY SAFE THIS BONFIRE NIGHT!

This is how we were warned about Sparklers on TV in the 1970's!

Ouch!

ARE HALLOWEEN AND BONFIRE NIGHT IMPORTANT TO YOU?

These two occasions, which bubble up just before the Christmas season kicks in, have waxed and waned  in popularity in my opinion. Halloween is on the rise and Bonfire Night is going out. I might be wrong though. What do you think?

Personally I do engage in the spirit of Halloween each year, at home, with a few monster toys and some spooky TV, but I don't bother with Bonfire Night in any way anymore. It was however huge when I was a kid and was a big deal for my family in early November.

Are these two events important to you readers? 

Is there something else happening before Xmas in your neck of the woods?

THE BURNING SEASON

Hi Woodsy. Although Bonfire Night is not celebrated here in the States, it is still a fine time of year for an outdoor bonfire. Were having warmer than usual nights here, but there was no harm in burning some nicely seasoned oak!

BrianF NJ USA

THE SMELL OF MOONDUST?

I've read somewhere ages ago that Moondust smells of spent gunpowder!

Is this correct as I have no way of verifying it. Moonbase is in lockdown and the regolith, though tantalisingly close, is out of bounds!

PUBLIC INFORMATION FILMS: HORROR FOR EVERYONE!

 These public information films used to scare the bejeesus out of me! I suppose that was the intention!

Do you remember them readers?

MORE BONFIRE MEMORIES

 I enjoyed this compilation on You Tube!

What do you think?

Can You Name Old Fireworks?

 All I can recall is the humble Banger! What else did we let off readers back in the day?

Was there just Standard Fireworks for sale?

BOMMY NIGHT

Courtesy of Bernard Dunne

light up the sky with standard fireworks!

As Scoop said, its November the Fifth today. Bonfire Night here in the UK.

I loved it as a kid. It was MUCH bigger than Halloween then, a situation reversed now I would say.

Bonfire or Bommy Night in the 60's was a family affair where we all stood round a bonfire and Dad let off fireworks. Then we'd go and watch other people's fireworks too!

Even buying the fireworks was left to Dad for some reason and I can vividly remember my Dad own bringing home boxes of Standard Fireworks like this, THE brand of the 60's and 70's. 

We'd eat bonfire toffee and maybe have pea soup with ham shank to keep us warm on the cold winter night.

Fireworks were the thing on Bommy Night. I don't think I ever got any toys.

I think Bonfire Night is on the wane nowadays. Do you agree?

Take care if you are celebrating tonight.

building the bonfires: the weeks before Halloween and Bommy Night when I was a child

The gloomy misty evenings of Autumn remind me of those distant darkening nights before the start of Winter when I was a kid, that fuzzy foggy Autumnal month before Halloween and Bonfire Night,

Primary School was an austere sort of place back then as the days got colder and shorter, a huge glowering Victorian pile of red bricks bristling with towers and gables like the Adams Family mansion. The classroom windows were huge and it felt like being in a church, a feeling strengthened by the floating nuns who taught some of the classes.

There were no trees outside, just vast walled playgrounds made of tar, bricks and concrete, one at either end of the school for boys and girls. Yes, we were separated at break and dinner like toxic cells in a petri dish.

Home life was completely different to school. Gone were the walls and the gates. Instead there were flower beds, trees and hedges in our garden. Even in the Autumn it was always fun to be there as All Hallows Eve and November the Fifth grew nearer. Spirits were abroad and I loved it.

I get my childhood Halloweens and Bonfire Nights mixed up nowadays. Being just five days apart they have merged into one murky feast of fear and fire. Their popularity has reversed as well. Bonfire Night was far bigger than Halloween where I lived in Preston back in the Sixties.

I picture huge heaps of sticks and timbers appearing mysteriously allover the city; piles of of wooden chairs, crates and pallettes towering like jengas on wasteland everywhere. Mucky kids came along and chucked ever more armfuls of branches and planks onto them in the weeks leading up to early November, when at last on the night of the Fifth they would be finally lit.

In October floppy scarecrows called Guys popped up in prams and sat on dark street corners, all requiring a shiny penny to give to the shivering but hopeful urchins gathered round like pickets dreaming of buying more roman candles and snowstorms.

In my wispy recollections I also see red apples dunked in tubs of cold water for biting, a fun rite known as bobbing; I see bags of sticky bonfire toffee, the king of all treacles without doubt; I see plates of hot pork pie and steaming mushy peas crowned with pickled rings of raw onion: I see bowls of delicious Lancashire lamb hot-pot with its traditional roof of angled potato slices garnished with a generous dollop of chunky yellow piccalilli on the side.

To wash down this hearty Autumn fare were thick glass bottles of fizzy Dandelion and Burdock, Cream Soda and Sarsaparilla as well as the ubiquitous Tizer and Lemonade. Further back on the trestle table were regiments of Mackeson, Newcy Brown and Pale Ale for the adults running the proceedings.

Trick or Treating wasn't big back then I don't think in the UK, although I did enjoy a good mask or prop on Halloween. Perhaps a Werewolf mask or a severed rubber hand to scare my friends with or my favourite laughing rubber skull, which I still have!

Ghoulish entertainment came in the form of Warren's Creepy and Eerie comics as well as Skywald's Psycho and Nightmare. TV provided An Appointment with Fear, a run of classic monster films that appeared on late night television like Curse of the Werewolf, The Trollemberg Terror, Night Must Fall and The Gorgon.

Scary stories abounded at the time as well as is traditional during the fading days of October. My friends and I all believed that there was a vampire asleep in a coffin in the annex to an abandoned church near us. An intrepid expedition to prove it ended unsuccessfully as we bottled it before we even got through the annex door and ran screaming up the road!

This year I hope to repeat at least a few of these Autumnal customs from my youth as I have done each year since. Maybe some pie and peas, a bag of toffee and good monster flick would do the trick ... or treat! Oh yes, and babysitting for my Grandson on Halloween too!

Do you like the misty nights of Autumn readers? What were and are they like?

a standard fireworks bommy night

Listen for the tune the last few seconds.

Its what I think of on Bommy night!

[can't find a copy of the proper old Standard Fireworks TV ad anywhere! You?]

ITS BONFIRE NIGHT IN THE UK: DANCING IN THE SMOKE

For the Bonfire lighters, the firework starters, for those that light the blue touch paper;

For the pie and peas makers, the beer servers, for those that hand the sparklers out;

For the anxious Dads, the laughing Mums, the brothers and sisters all aglow;

For the Guy, the bommy, the bangers and the Roman Candles;

This is Argent and Dancing in the Smoke.

[1970] Couretsy of The Runner75 You Tube

What are you doing tonight wherever you are in the world?