www.rumblebook.co.uk fire fascination, firework and festival mark fleming fire fascination, firework and festival copyright © 2013 Mark Fleming designed and published by Rumble United Kingdom www.rumblebook.co.uk [email protected] ISBN: 978-0-9550621-3-1 All rights reserved. This electronic book edition is released with the intention of it being freely distributed. No charge must be made. This only applies to the electronic book in whole form. Otherwise, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means - graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems - without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Contents introduction 1 fire 5 Guy Fawkes 13 gunpowder 27 the makers 53 culture 87 acknowledgments 102 photo credits 103 links 105 fire fascination, firework and festival introduction So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us. Gaston Bachelard he excitement reached its peak before Any lingering romance came with the the countdown. There came a ripple blisters of tying endless tubes to wooden Tof noise from the crowd when the stakes, with fingers made purple by cold. firework lighters lit their portfires, before But, bit by bit, the waiting display grew, the taking their positions beside the fireworks. fireworks readied and covered against the The display stood poised and loaded, ready seasonal damp. Aerial shells nestled at the to make the night its own. Most in the crowd bottom of their launch tubes, fuses dangling looked to the sky in anticipation, their eyes over-the-top, fixed with paper tape to stop picking through clouds of breath and the the breeze flapping them about. Rockets smoke of sparklers; I looked instead to the stood in racks, aimed downwind, their sticks darkened figures weaving among the racks vibrating as if itching for release. After a day of mortars, fountains and candles. I watched of frantic, noisy hammering and digging, in complete fascination. there came a descendent calm as the late afternoon shadows, if present, lengthened. Oh to be one of them, I thought. A lighter of With the setting sun, there arrived the fireworks. Surely one of the most romantic adrenaline rush of waiting while the jobs in the world for an eight-year-old who audience began to assemble; thousands loves fireworks. What could be more gathering, all drawn from their homes, exciting than handling and lighting proper battling traffic and crowded pavements to fireworks? Big fireworks. Then, nearly two stand in a playing field. From within the decades later I was one of them and heart of the display, the operators could hear discovered just how hard, cold and often the crowd's reaction to the lighting of the damp the job can prove. Digging large holes portfires. Our moment came to orchestrate into stony ground to bury mortar tubes, and the release of pure chemical energy against hammering wooden stakes into the stony soil the sky; be it a canopy of stars, or the dull as the November chill made itself known. muddy orange of streetlights on low cloud. 1 fire fascination, firework and festival Little prepares you for being in the centre of the appeal of the stage performer is yours to a large hand-lit firework display. There, savour, and all the hard work of the day finds within its core, you feel and respect the itself repaid with interest. energy released. You experience the raw force of gunpowder - one of humankind's At Alexander Palace, in the early 1990s, greatest inventions and the shaper of while walking back through the crowd for a well-earned drink with my colleagues from Pain's Fireworks, a small boy pointed at me. "Wow, a firework man," he said to his parents. Of all my experiences with fireworks, that moment tops the lot, for I well remember saying much the same of a similar overall- clad figure at an early 1970s firework display near my childhood home. I was now a firework man, and took my place in a long lineage of soot- smeared others, each of whom tastes that sublime moment when the display is over and yet you just want more. civilisations across a thousand years. The I fell in love with fireworks, and with our concussion of a launched shell tickles the tradition of Firework Night, at the age of inside of your lungs and makes your heart five, when looking out across the back skip a beat. At ground zero, the golden gardens from an upstairs window of my sparks bounce off your safety visor and family home. What were these strange lights trickle down your arms as you position and sounds that made the garden come alive yourself ready for the next firing cue. You to a glow so different from everything else in feel the power of a flight of large rockets the world? To go out into the back garden in when they tear into the sky a few feet away the dark was in itself unique, and marked the from where you stand, the cases and sticks night as being different. Then came the utter whistling away at arm's length. A bubble of magic of watching my father light the ends gunpowder scented smoke surrounds you, of small card tubes. They made glittering obscuring all but you and the next firework, snowstorms and dancing coloured balls, or there waiting in the glow of a torch and the things that made spirals of gold on the fence, rising light of its fellows. And then, fifteen to or rushed into the sky from the neck of a twenty minutes after the start, as the noise bottle. and smoke of the finalé heads out across the trees, you hear the delicious sound of This is when the evening seared itself into applause and shouts of joy from the my mind, and I have never been able to rid audience. For a few anonymous moments, the vision since, nor, do I wish to. 2 fire fascination, firework and festival We use fireworks across the world to herald them in celebration for over one thousand events, celebrate occasions and for their pure years, and show no sign of losing our exhilarating entertainment. Name anything fascination. Here, we will celebrate them; else with the ability to make millions leave these small handmade tubes of dusts, and we their homes at night to gather in dark places. will celebrate the industry that made them They are, quite simply, the greatest form of possible, and the tradition that makes them mass entertainment - one that transcends all compelling in our modern technological national boundaries and tastes. We have used world. 3 fire fascination, firework and festival 4 fire fascination, firework and festival fire A house is not an home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body. Benjamin Franklin o appreciate the cultural and social Our fascination with fire is ancient and value of fireworks, one must first instinctive. It is a fascination for an entity Tunderstand the impact and that has helped shape our society and importance of fire, both in the past and in the influence our beliefs for countless present. Just try to imagine your life without generations. Across the world, and fire. Start at home and imagine no central throughout human history, fire has played a heating and no cooking on gas. Imagine a vital and vivid roll in all manner of folklores, reduced supply of electricity for our myths and yearly rituals. It has influenced computers, televisions and lights; for we still our lives, bringing safety, entertainment and burn coal, gas and oil to produce most of our fear in equal measure. It remains the most electricity. We would have no glass, no important tool in the arsenal we use to ceramics and no cast or forged metal. We exploit, alter and travel our world. It appears would have no gas-turbine engines and magical and ethereal; a spiritual entity from internal combustion engines - no aeroplanes another world, and one considered worthy of and fewer cars, in other words. On a more worship. It possesses a startling and personal level, we would have no candlelit mesmerising beauty, a beauty with the romantic meals, no fireside chats and no ability to inspire art, literature and romance. barbecues turning the evening a hazy and It appears almost alive, in that it requires fragrant blue in the summer. Candles burn in food and air, moves of its own accord and churches, and eternal flames remember the can reproduce at will. It may appear passing of people and events. Within the past benevolent one moment, offering life and year, a single flame followed a 7000-mile protection, before turning against us, trip around the British Isles. Lit from the becoming cruel and dangerous, waiting to midday sun in Athens, this symbolic flame snap at our folly, and unforgiving in its lived until the closing ceremony of the ability to destroy our surroundings. Fire is London 2012 Summer Olympics. We may remarkable in so many ways, both good and live through each day without witnessing a bad, and through its unusual dual nature our living flame, but we are rarely more than a ancestors developed a deep fascination and few metres from the product of one. respect for this strange and elemental force. 5 fire fascination, firework and festival Until the discovery of mechanical methods altered in their flavour and texture. Once this for creating fire - using flints or friction transformation became realised, these generated heat - the early fires our ancestors sporadic fires were no longer fearsome witnessed were natural events.