Once again, Bonfire Night has passed, and we have all gone out to enjoy the fireworks and bonfires and gunpowder. I absolutely love fireworks and bonfires; I’m a bit of a pyromaniac like that. Its not that I like running about the place setting everything I see alight or am planning blowing up the Houses of Parliament anytime soon, but there is something quite surreal and wonderful about fire. It’s unlike any of the other elements; water and earth and air are all tangible in some sense, or are at least made up of some sorts of atoms we are aware of. But fire isn’t anything you can capture or hold, its just pure, abstract energy. And for this reason, I find it totally mesmerizing (oh I am such the physicist.) However, having said this, I cannot say all my experience with fireworks has been wonderful. Speaking of ‘remember, remember’, I remember when I was a lot younger back in the good ol’ days of when all the kids in the town would meet around a massive bonfire, and then retreat to one particularly welcoming parent’s house (heaven forbid) for some jolly old fireworks. However I distinctly remember that in one year, I was particularly interested in the all-you-can-eat- buffet, which as you can imagine, I took to mean literally. So rather than being interested in the sparklers, the apple bobbing, and the eloquent conversation of fellow 7 year olds, I busied myself with stuffing my face with as much burger, sausage, avocado and cake as I could possibly fit in. In fact, I ate so much, I think I turned into a massive black-hole sucking in every possible edible thing which had been roasted on charcoal, until the world was stripped of all things smoky and covered in ketchup. Anyway, I was so busy eating all this food, I was completely oblivious to the fact that the giant ‘Golden Fountain of Midos’ had been set alight, and that everyone had retreated to the back of the garden. And suddenly, midway between bites of hot-dog, this huge explosion set off right next to me, and the next thing I knew, I was prancing about the place, yelling for someone to turn it off, trying to avoid the sparks of fire which were coming straight towards my face. My first instinct was to throw the hot-dog into the inferno, which just set on fire and bounced back at me. So not only was I avoiding the firework itself, I know had an evil fire-sausage on my trail. I was jumping about so much, that all the other kids thought I was part of the act, like some Greek sprite doing a hot-dog ritual, and so just stood there going “oooooohhh” and “aaaaahhh”. Even these days, I still have a fear of demonic hot-dogs.
Please, just please watch anything by Charlie Chaplin. Especially the ‘Great Dictator’. Frickin’ amazing. Listen to ‘Mad World’ by Gary Jules, and ‘Run On’by Moby.
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