INTRODUCTION
The excitement reached its peak before the countdown. There came a ripple of noise from the crowd when the firework lighters lit their portfires, before taking their positions beside the fireworks. The display stood poised and loaded, ready to make the night its own. Most in the crowd looked to the sky in anticipation, their eyes picking through clouds of breath and the smoke of sparklers; I looked instead to the darkened figures weaving among the racks of mortars, fountains and candles. I watched in complete fascination.
Oh to be one of them, I thought. A lighter of fireworks. Surely one of the most romantic jobs in the world for an eight-year-old who loves fireworks. What could be more exciting than handling and lighting proper fireworks? Big fireworks. Then, nearly two decades later I was one of them and discovered just how hard, cold and often damp the job can prove. Digging large holes into stony ground to bury mortar tubes, and hammering wooden stakes into the stony soil as the November chill made itself known. Any lingering romance came with the blisters of tying endless tubes to wooden stakes, with fingers made purple by cold. But, bit by bit, the waiting display grew, the fireworks readied and covered against the seasonal damp. Aerial shells nestled at the bottom of their launch tubes, fuses dangling over-the-top, fixed with paper tape to stop the breeze flapping them about. Rockets stood in racks, aimed downwind, their sticks vibrating as if itching for release. After a day of frantic, noisy hammering and digging, there came a descendent calm as the late afternoon shadows, if present, lengthened. With the setting sun, there arrived the adrenaline rush of waiting while the audience began to assemble; thousands gathering, all drawn from their homes, battling traffic and crowded pavements to stand in a playing field. From within the heart of the display, the operators could hear the crowd's reaction to the lighting of the portfires. Our moment came to orchestrate the release of pure chemical energy against the sky; be it a canopy of stars, or the dull muddy orange of streetlights on low cloud.
Little prepares you for being in the centre of a large hand-lit firework display. There, within its core, you feel and respect the energy released. You experience the raw force of gunpowder - one of humankind's greatest inventions and the shaper of civilisations across a thousand years. The concussion of a launched shell tickles the inside of your lungs and makes your heart skip a beat. At ground zero, the golden sparks bounce off your safety visor and trickle down your arms as you position yourself ready for the next firing cue. You feel the power of a flight of large rockets when they tear into the sky a few feet away from where you stand, the cases and sticks whistling away at arm's length. A bubble of gunpowder scented smoke surrounds you, obscuring all but you and the next firework, there waiting in the glow of a torch and the rising light of its fellows. And then, fifteen to twenty minutes after the start, as the noise and smoke of the finalé heads out across the trees, you hear the delicious sound of applause and shouts of joy from the audience. For a few anonymous moments, the appeal of the stage performer is yours to savour, and all the hard work of the day finds itself repaid with interest.
At Alexander Palace, in the early 1990s, 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.
I fell in love with fireworks, and with our tradition of Firework Night, at the age of five, when looking out across the back gardens from an upstairs window of my family home. What were these strange lights and sounds that made the garden come alive to a glow so different from everything else in the world? To go out into the back garden in the dark was in itself unique, and marked the night as being different. Then came the utter magic of watching my father light the ends of small card tubes. They made glittering snowstorms and dancing coloured balls, or things that made spirals of gold on the fence, or rushed into the sky from the neck of a bottle.
This is when the evening seared itself into my mind, and I have never been able to rid the vision since, nor to be honest wish to.
We use fireworks across the world to herald events, celebrate occasions and for their pure exhilarating entertainment. Name anything else with the ability to make millions leave their homes at night to gather in dark places. They are, quite simply, the greatest form of mass entertainment - one that transcends all national boundaries and tastes. We have used them in celebration for over one thousand years, and show no sign of losing our fascination. Here, we will celebrate them; these small handmade tubes of dusts, and we will celebrate the industry that made them possible, and the tradition that makes them compelling in our modern technological world.
Chapter 2 to follow - FIRE
( A free and beautifully illustrated version of this book is available, in PDF format from http:www.rumblebook.co.uk 109 pages, 286 illustrations )
