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Halloween & Bonfire night


Fanoffooty

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Ive been taking my kids to the fireworks display at the bught every year since they were little

I know its all about safety , but does anyone else agree that its a bit boring , same thing year in year out

When i was a bairn the lead up to Halloween & Bonfire night was so exciting

Nowadays people are frightened to let their kids out or frightened to answer their doors

A sad sign of the times :rotflmao:

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Was always (at least) two bonfires at the back of St Valery Ave, and half the fun was the weeks/days leading up to it when you would gather every possible item you could get your hands on that might burn. If you were really lucky one of the neighbours would be replacing a shed or garage and was only too happy to have the free labour to take it away.

If you were brave enough you'd build it the weekend before and then have someone who's job it was to keep guard over it (sometimes involving skipping school...just in case). Then whilst you were trying to sneak in to set the other one alight early, they were trying to do the same to you.....or if the coast was particularly clear, you'd nick some of the big stuff and then set fire to the rest.

The fire at our end of the street was normally built right opposite our back door, meaning that we could keep vigil through the night from the bedroom window

As I said, you'd throw anything that would burn on there, no worries about fumes from plastics or lead paint or anything like that and if you could sneak a tyre into the others then it was hilarious watching them being smoked out. Nobody that I know ever suffered any ill effects.

Then on bonfire night itself, everyone had fireworks and their was little concern for 25 metre exclusion zones and 50 metre drop zones. You just stuck it in the ground, nailed it to a fence/post or used milk bottles to set off rockets.

The "Guy" was normally based on a teacher (headmaster/mistress) when I was a kid. Oh, and how could I forget....mother always brought a bag of spuds and a roll of foil. If you were lucky you got a bit of butter or margarine to go with it, if not you just scoffed them as they were....if you were really nails you'd also eat the burnt skin :rotflmao:

Bonfire night was another one of those community gatherings which are desperately missed these days.

Halloween is a bit the same, it's apparently no longer "safe" for kids to go out guising for one reason or another. Kids don't make their own costumes and parents won't spend the time doing it with them so the few guisers you do see roaming about are teenagers who've thrown on a balaclava and gone out as a mugger...and then they wonder why nobody opens the door to them and they react by kicking and booting it, rattling on windows and having the police called on them as a result.

Halloween has all got a bit "sanitised" and somewhat PC. When I was growing up you made a costume from what you had available. That meant that witches, cats, burglars or whatever all had their face blackened with soot from the fireplace....and on the PC front, a popular costume coming out of our house was often a "Black Minister" as it was easy to do - School shirt on back to front, blazer, face blackened with soot and a bible....sorted. If you did that now you'd be hounded for being a racist!!! Dressing young girls up as St Trinians girls would be considered degrading, and any lads going out dressed as a woman would be called gay, or parents chastised for it being inappropriate.

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Was always (at least) two bonfires at the back of St Valery Ave, and half the fun was the weeks/days leading up to it when you would gather every possible item you could get your hands on that might burn.

Fond memories indeed of that! The one I used to go to was the one just along from the garages beside the electric flats and it was indeed great fun steadily piling up the combustibles during the preceding days and weeks. Then there was also the duty of "guarding the bonfire" just in case outsiders came and set it alight prematurely. We used to light a wee fire beside ours and sit round it, hoping to God that we wouldn't get a visit from the Ferry.

I cringe at the thought that I used to keep quite large piles of firweorks in the cupboard below the stairs. we really were so careless with them.

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Its all about Health and Safety nowadays, cant have a crap without some sort of risk assessment in place.

When i was a nipper we used to have a cracking bonfire in the field behind the houses in Glenburn drive, ok until they set a garage and a shed on fire by accident, so from that angle going from the fire brigades busiest night of the year its now mostly under supervision and a lot safer.

Remember the fun you could have with bangers! bangers in telephone boxes, dustbins,car exhausts, under tins to see how high they went, even being dared to hold the bloody things with yer finger tips!

Oh the danger..

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Its all about Health and Safety nowadays, cant have a crap without some sort of risk assessment in place.

When i was a nipper we used to have a cracking bonfire in the field behind the houses in Glenburn drive, ok until they set a garage and a shed on fire by accident, so from that angle going from the fire brigades busiest night of the year its now mostly under supervision and a lot safer.

Remember the fun you could have with bangers! bangers in telephone boxes, dustbins,car exhausts, under tins to see how high they went, even being dared to hold the bloody things with yer finger tips!

Oh the danger..

Penny bangers were great... but anyone remember the twopenny ones?! There was a huge wasps' nest in the garages between St. Andrew and St. Ninian Drive with exit and entrance from a small hole in the concrete.

The hole was just big enough to push a twopenny banger through!

Also, remember "genies" when you would open up a banger (or two or three), pour out the gunpowder and set it alight?

Then the old adage...

Tommy:"Please miss, Johnny stuck a banger up a dog's ?rse".

Teacher: Tommy, it's "rectum".

Tommy: Rectum? Bloody near killed him!

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Also, remember "genies" when you would open up a banger (or two or three), pour out the gunpowder and set it alight?

"Genies" were once responsible for the near total loss of my eyebrows after one particular episode showing off to some lassies!! Whoooooooosh ........and eh was left looking like Al Jolson :rotflmao: I also lost a fair amount of pubescent leg hair after stamping on a box of Bluebell matches to see what would happen !! No the sharpest knife in the box at that point in time (some would say no much has cheenged)

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Also, remember "genies" when you would open up a banger (or two or three), pour out the gunpowder and set it alight?

"Genies" were once responsible for the near total loss of my eyebrows after one particular episode showing off to some lassies!! Whoooooooosh ........and eh was left looking like Al Jolson :thumb04: I also lost a fair amount of pubescent leg hair after stamping on a box of Bluebell matches to see what would happen !! No the sharpest knife in the box at that point in time (some would say no much has cheenged)

:rotflmao: :018:

We had a risky game with a 2" metal tube and a heavy wooden ball, block one end of the tube stick it in the ground, throw in a lighted banger followed by the ball, the crack was when the heavy ball gave in to gravity and more or less headed back to base... we tried it with 3 bangers tied together, what a feckin bang!!! ears were ringing for hours.

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Was always (at least) two bonfires at the back of St Valery Ave, and half the fun was the weeks/days leading up to it when you would gather every possible item you could get your hands on that might burn. If you were really lucky one of the neighbours would be replacing a shed or garage and was only too happy to have the free labour to take it away.

If you were brave enough you'd build it the weekend before and then have someone who's job it was to keep guard over it (sometimes involving skipping school...just in case). Then whilst you were trying to sneak in to set the other one alight early, they were trying to do the same to you.....or if the coast was particularly clear, you'd nick some of the big stuff and then set fire to the rest.

I remember those days. One of the Hawthorn Drive ones used to be in the fields behind my house because my neighbour was usually the one "organising" it. Much like CaleyD mentioned, you would get all manner of things to add to it and then watch out for those who had other bonfires trying to steal things ..... occasionally you also sent out raiding parties to get some of the best stuff from other peoples bonfires too ... especially the St Valery Avenue ones.

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Bonfire night was another one of those community gatherings which are desperately missed these days.

Halloween is a bit the same, it's apparently no longer "safe" for kids to go out guising for one reason or another. Kids don't make their own costumes and parents won't spend the time doing it with them so the few guisers you do see roaming about are teenagers who've thrown on a balaclava and gone out as a mugger...and then they wonder why nobody opens the door to them and they react by kicking and booting it, rattling on windows and having the police called on them as a result.

Halloween has all got a bit "sanitised" and somewhat PC. When I was growing up you made a costume from what you had available. That meant that witches, cats, burglars or whatever all had their face blackened with soot from the fireplace....and on the PC front, a popular costume coming out of our house was often a "Black Minister" as it was easy to do - School shirt on back to front, blazer, face blackened with soot and a bible....sorted. If you did that now you'd be hounded for being a racist!!! Dressing young girls up as St Trinians girls would be considered degrading, and any lads going out dressed as a woman would be called gay, or parents chastised for it being inappropriate.

Aye those were the days

Theres no the same atmosphere or community spirit & being gay meant you were happy !

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I remember gathereing the stuff for the ones in Ardersier it was good no one could set it alight as it was all behing huge gates and fence (well it seemed huge when i was little )

It was brill this lady in the village use to make all the kids toffee apples you paid a little fpor the tickets and you got either stovies or soup and toffee apples

i miss those day wish it was still like that !!

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RECIPE: BANGER CHICKEN

1. Buy packet of bangers

2. Take said bangers to Walker Park

3. Find largest, ripest pile of dog keech in vicinity

4. Insert bangers in keech

5. Stand in tight circle round keech and banger combination (participants preferably wearing white shell suits)

6. Light bangers

7. Wait

This, I should point out, is not an activity I particpated in, although I did witness it, and the aftermath, from a safe distance...

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I seem to recall as a lad we nicked all the fireworks from the field at the back of St Valery and went round dalneigh terrifying all and sundry by setting them off in peoples gardens and chucking them at peoples windows, good days :rotflmao:

Oh dear DC... you're reminding me of a few skeletons in my own Dalneigh cupboard! Our fireworks exploits reached a zenith when we stuck a Roman Candle in Mrs Anderson the Dalneigh Primary 5 teacher's hedge in St. Ninian Drive and let it off.

Alternative.... Banger Chicken sounds like the kind of thing kids from Millburn would do!!! Hilarious though!

Edited by Charles Bannerman
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