Fireworks

In a generation we have seen the virtual consignment to history of an national event.

In my youth Guy Fawkes night was a big social event. Young children made "guys" which were strategically placed outside shops and on street corners, adults were systematically relieved of money by the call "penny for the guy". This money would then be wisely invested in fireworks some of which would be retained for the event of the evening, others would blow the lot on bangers which would be the source of many juvenile pranks and attempts to blow things up.

Communities would organize themselves and plots of waste land would be secured for the bonfire which would contain things like old setees tyres doors and other general waste. Often these would be placed a bit daft and the fire service might end preventing the bonfire turning into conflagration.

Pranks also abounded, so if your neighboring street was having a party you might try and secrete a little something in their bonfire to liven things up. This was a generation that included a lot of people who had been in the services so someone could usually run up an improvised explosive device in the garden shed from common ingredients, meaning every so often a cheery bonfire party might be interrupted by a tremendous explosion!

I am sure people got hurt in these events.

If I am sure people got hurt that way it's matter of public record that lots of people got hurt every year letting off fireworks that even young kids could just walk in and buy.

The mindset was different though. If someone dropped a banger behind you and you got deafened and scared half out of your wits you did not look round for someone to sue. You got your own back.

If you lit a firework in a dangerous way and it went all wrong you didn't sue the manufacturer you told yourself you were a prat.

It started with the at home fireworks, they went, you could not sit there and watch dad try to blow himself up, (something he usually failed to do), then we had the public jamborees, how these were safer is not entirely clear to me.

Something usually went wrong. I remember the rocket that did a low altitude flypast of the crowd before hitting the ambulance roof and exploding in my first aid post when I was doing first aid at one particular display.

It started with an assault on the individual and their alcoholic attempts at self incineration in the garden.

Then the communal fire display became subject to attention. Now you need a licence and a health and safety certificate to hold one. Are we all so daft that we need to be taught to light the blue touch paper and run like hell or that lighting fireworks in the firework box is perhaps not wise?

OK, so maybe there was a case to be made.

I remember some spectacular events, when I was a teenager, at the golf club fire display. Golf clubs were excuses for grown up men to be away from their wives getting very drunk. Oh and driving home was no problem as the chair of the local bench was usually in the bar having after hours drinkies with his mate the chief inspector.

That is an observation, and should not be taken to condone drinking and driving.

So the golf club fireworks bash was a bit beyond what a modern health and safety type would have enough paper to write the dangers of.

Sure enough, things did get beyond silly.

One year, they had mortars, that's a big tube in the ground 3 foot or so deep.

So they dropped one in and it didn't go off.

A minute later someone dropped another one on top and it did.

So did the whole damn lot.

Big style.

The crater, viewed the day after was about 6 foot deep.

At the time we ran like hell then laughed like drains.

More recently, we had a firework display in the valley where after ending the display all the duds and stumps went on the bonfire, it was awesome, watching what happened next I could not believe that someone over 60 could run that fast. Then again there was a mini Hiroshima going on behind him.

It was also brilliant, it was a connection with being alive, it was life and living it.

Firework parties come and go but we remember the ones where something went spectacularly wrong. Sometimes people get terribly hurt, but most often they don't.

Could the increase in mental health problems in society be linked to the limitations we seem to have placed on risk taking behaviour and preventing ourselves from doing things that make us feel alive?

Is the obsession with being safe and avoiding risk dangerous in itself.....

R