Bonfire Night firework 'celebrations' have spiralled out of control: Sarah Todd
With a birthday a few days later, November 5th was always a favourite night of the year as a child.
There would be a fire - there is always something to find to burn on a farm - sparklers and maybe a few fireworks if we were lucky. Your correspondent can remember they came in packaging not dissimilar to a Christmas chocolate selection box.
They were old-fashioned family affairs, with a few special friends invited if we’d got around to it. My father bobbing around with a torch, nailing Roman candles to the post and rail fencing, between pitchforking up the fire.
Our simple special once-a-year evenings were entirely different to today’s week-long nightmare - a fortnight some report from towns and cities - which could be mistaken for some sort of warzone.
There was no worrying about the livestock, the few fireworks that were let off just weren’t noisy enough to be of any bother to them. Nobody had traumatised cats and dogs back then.
The way fireworks, compared to those halcyon days in the 1970s and 80s, have got bigger and so much noisier seems somehow to mirror the way the world has gone down an altogether brasher, supersized road.
Christmas has been similarly ruined by the same sort of people. It’s now at least a month-long indulgence.
An assault on good taste with nobody even really pretending to know or care about its religious roots. Oh forgot, it’s more about seasonal celebrations and warmest winter wishes these days. Enough to make a vicar swear.
Like drug addicts needing more to get a high, the general public seem no longer content with one special day. Instead, it’s a marathon series of displays of vulgar excess.
The little copper-haired girl who relished making a Guy for the bonfire and putting it in a wheelbarrow to proudly take around the village now absolutely hates this particular week of the year.
We have horses, including an in-foal filly, and they are currently - while it’s still mild - living outside at grass. It turns the stomach wondering what to do for the best, bring them in to stables but then worry about that stressing them more than being outside in their own habitat.
The top and bottom of it is if you just knew it was going to be for one night only, but we have been on high alert for over a week and it will continue after the weekend. There will be some hotel or club that is putting on an ‘extravaganza’ and because nobody seems to have to get up and go off to work the next morning these days they won’t be short of people paying the admission charge.
Well, it’s for the kiddies, bless them, why go to one bonfire display when you can go to five?
Same little darlings who are still on a sugar rush from the horrific excesses of that monstrous American import Halloween. Trying to remember, some people might have cut a scary face into a turnip but in our corner of North Yorkshire nothing was really made of it. There were always a few goings on come Mischief Night, the night before, but nothing too untoward.
Some of the older village lads would appear and maybe move a bench or do something really daring, like wrap a roll of toilet paper around the telephone box. Their mothers hadn’t spent small fortunes on costumes and make-up; it was just fun to be out and larking about with mates. That was enough. Why so much conspicuous consumerism?
There is no simpler pleasure than standing around a bonfire, sipping a drink and having a bit of bit of a chat with a few people. Thinking aloud, perhaps health and safety started the rot.
Whereas villages and community groups used to organise an annual fundraising bonfire night, they got spooked by risk assessments and the fear of somebody suing if a little darling did something silly and got burnt.
Out of their demise grew gargantuan affairs, all about the experience being bigger and better than the one down the road. Rather than humble gatherings, that effort of finding clothes for the Guy, baking and gathering bits of old wood and rubbish to feed the flames, tomorrow night - and about a week either side - is turned into a series of spectaculars. Grim gargantuan efforts that isolate so many.
While pets and ponies are more your correspondent’s cup of tea, there must be thoughts with people living disabilities and dementia. There has also been a lot written about the impact on some vulnerable veterans.
Speak at the other side, surely it will all be over by then …