16 replies to this topic

[EnigmaticBiker]

Haven't started a thread in ages and Nostalgia was looking a little sparse.

When do you first recall seeing fireworks?
What age, where were you, who you were with etc

What impressed you at the time, does it still?

Here's mine:-

My grandad picked me up from my parents' place and drove through Liverpool. Past the gaudy painted victorian pubs on every corner and the lights glinted from every drop of rain on the windscreen as my excitement mounted.
I watched my Ripraps career down the yard and basked in the glow of Traffic lights and Fireflies.

We walked around Anfield all evening from bonfire to bonfire.
In the back streets and recreation grounds large bonfires were lit on the cobbles. The fires' light gave a magical feel to the dirty old city, every street with its' own, it seemed. Contrasting the dark buildings against shining deep orange flames. Above, shells burst in the smoky glow as kids set off bangers and whirled sparklers.
Families came out to watch the bonfires with the sound of sirens in the air as the brigade moved to put out the dangerous ones.
I was seven, it felt like a different world and I guess it was...

Took me thirty years to get another Riprap.

[karlfoxman]

Ahh traffic lights was one of the best fireworks, and to this day I have not made a replica! I also remember my dad setting off a red parachute flare roman candle, it shot up and opened. Slowly drifted down glowing bright red. I went between our wooden shed and our wodden fence! But fond memories, I must have been around 8 years old. I loved the old Standard packs. I might look around for a few labels of old ones and make some replicas. Just a thought.

Edit: Just found a link to some old firework lables

http://www.cyber-her...lery6/main.html

Edited by karlfoxman, 27 September 2006 - 08:14 PM.

[EnigmaticBiker]

Ahh traffic lights was one of the best fireworks, and to this day I have not made a replica! I also remember my dad setting off a red parachute flare roman candle, it shot up and opened. Slowly drifted down glowing bright red. I went between our wooden shed and our wodden fence! But fond memories, I must have been around 8 years old. I loved the old Standard packs. I might look around for a few labels of old ones and make some replicas. Just a thought.

Edit: Just found a link to some old firework lables

http://www.cyber-her...lery6/main.html

Great, I've bookmarked that site, what surprises me when reading it is how many I remember.
Collecting them from all the little corner shops was almost as exciting as setting them off!

I was an early convert to racial integration, the Pakistani/Indian shops stayed open so I could buy sweets and fireworks up to 8 o'clock at night! Back in the days when everything else shut at 6.

[BigBang]

Wow....those labels certainly bring back fond memories. I can remember those like it was yesterday.

When those fireworks were on sale, i remember hanging around the sweet shops, for hours sometimes, asking total strangers to go in and buy these fireworks for me, coz i was under age. It was mostly bangers i was after! My favs were the Brocks 'cannon' bangers. It was a real achiement to get hold of those.

I used to get about 20p a day for dinner money back then.....but not much of that went on dinner around sept/oct/nov time! Fireworks were sold for many weeks before the big day back then.

My earliest memory of a firework.....mmmmm, i have to say it was a Standard firework called 'apollo' or 'apollo11' Does anyone else remember these-8 in the air. I remember watching one of these as a young boy and being completely mesmerised by it.

Ahh.....those were the days

[EnigmaticBiker]

Ahh.....those were the days

Here's a firework art site with history in the UK over the last century:-

http://www.firework-art.com

[phildunford]

Now this is a bit vague, but here goes...

Loved fireworks from when I was very small, but a pivital moment was when I was reading a graphic novel when I was 5 or 6 - might have been TinTin. The heros had gathered up up a huge pile of fireworks (can't remember why!) and put them in a boat. Thing was they were not the little garden fireworks I knew, but huge cylinders and volcanoes 4 feet tall and rockets as tall as people- all wrapped in plain or stripy paper with large satisfying fuses topped off with blue touch paper. now they were fireworks! - had to have some of them!

Taken me another 45 years but I'm getting there!!

[BrightStar]

One of my earliest fireworks memories as a child was obtaining a pack of ten Brocks Bangers to play with.

See: Brocks Bangers Photo - fireworkmuseum.co.uk

This was in the late eighties and by then, they had been reduced to a very weak and almost harmless BP salute with a 3 second spolette type fuse and the obligatory blue touch paper. Although the bang was unimpressive, I discovered that by strengthening or weakening the casings, more interesting effects could be obtained - in no time I had them jumping in the air, spinning on the spot and generally performing all sorts of aerial acrobatics.

Of course, by then I was hooked... Happy days...

Edited by BrightStar, 20 October 2006 - 03:06 PM.

[Rip Rap]

Mists, damp, dark & eerie evenings around Halloween time are some of my first firework recollections. The occasional distant muffled thud of a banger, or a sudden burst of colour through the gloom from a rocket. Smoke from bonfires burning leaves adding to the magical atmosphere. Through my young eyes, fireworks were literally magic! The colours, the smells, the noise ? all fantastic! Whenever I smell burning leaves, these wonderful times come running back!
The first fireworks that I remember seeing up close & touching were Standard garden fireworks. A few days before Nov 5th, my Dad would bring home a selection box of fireworks. I was allowed to carefully examine each one ? ?Olympic Torch? (had a plastic handle to hold), ?Aeroplane?, ?Mine of Serpents? & ?Snow Storm? are items that I clearly remember. The touch & smell of these items of magic was very important!
The first fireworks I actually bought were a box of 6 Standard ?Starseeker? rockets & a packet of bangers (it sounds sad ? but I really can remember what I bought ? it was that much of a moment to remember).
I am in my 40?s now & fireworks are (obviously) still magical to me. I enjoy public displays, but still far prefer family garden firework parties. I only wish that you could still buy the British blue touchpaper fireworks that you could get years ago!
It?s true you know ? ?he who hath smelt the smoke is ne?er again free?

[EnigmaticBiker]

The occasional distant muffled thud of a banger, or a sudden burst of colour through the gloom from a rocket. Smoke from bonfires burning leaves adding to the magical atmosphere.

Very evocative indeed.
I don't find it 'sad' you remember what you bought, obviously meant a lot.

Spent so much time fiddling with my slowly growing firework collection, I'm surprised they ever worked.

I loved bicycling around in the mist with the glow lighting up the sky, the distant reports like enemy gunfire.

[Rip Rap]

Spent so much time fiddling with my slowly growing firework collection, I'm surprised they ever worked.

Lol, thats right - by the time you had finished examining the contents of a box for the umpteenth time, there was loads of loose powder spilling around in the bottom of the box.

I loved bicycling around in the mist with the glow lighting up the sky, the distant reports like enemy gunfire.

Fantastic wasn't it! It was the whole atmosphere that made it - the misty lights, smells & sounds.

[pmhcfc]

The one thing I remember most -way back in the 70's- was getting up early in the morning after firework night and go out looking for fallen rocket casings. I'd walk round the estate I lived on to see how many I could find.
As a family we never had fireworks, not when I was a youngster. I used to dream of the day when I could hold a display! Now-a-days, with me at 41 and my youngest at 7, I make sure we have a LARGE display of our own. We aren't rolling in money but I make sure we save enough to spend around £1000 on our garden display!! We do food etc and have a group of friends round, the kids get to invite 2 friends each as well. I got our fireworks for this year on the 15th October!! Wish I could get more though.. I cant get hold of those shells -the ones that look like coconuts- that you so often see used for pro displays.
I only ever remember there being Standard and Brocks fireworks when I was a kid..We too used to stand outside the village sweet shop and wait for unsuspecting members of the public to go in and buy us the bangers we so desired. I also remember one year going to a mates firework party..One or two of the fireworks failed to ignite and we 'borrowed' them after it had all finished..Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure one of them was called 'Jack in the Box' (later banned). We took the stricken firework up to the 'garages' and tried every manner to get it to light. It was when the 6 of us were huddled over the thing, with lit bits of paper etc, when the thing decided to 'blow up' in our faces...Christ we were lucky, we all got away with very minor burns....Happy days

[EnigmaticBiker]

Christ we were lucky, we all got away with very minor burns....Happy days

Yes, the "Jack in the box", a mine if I remember.

Try some of the links earlier on in this thread.

I had an extreme experience with a iffy chinese air b**b repeater once, lit as normal, the whole lot went up!
Salutes, propellant, the lot!
When we got back up off the ground, tiny pieces of paper rained down, excellent

I notice it's your first post, welcome to the forum.

[pmhcfc]

I notice it's your first post, welcome to the forum

Thanks for your welcome Enigmatic...I'm just sat here remembering the good old bad old days of the mid 70's lol..I think my desire to collect old rocket casings was something to do with the fact that my parents 'never did fireworks'...
Funnily enough, last year when I did our display, one of my friends helping me light the fireworks actually placed of of the slightly larger mines up-side-down..and lit it!!! It blew the firework off the 'stand' I was using and down the garden, where it promptly blew up and then started firing out things all over the garden..I have it on video...my wife screaming at the kids to 'get down behind the fence' and me and my friend darting about the garden trying to avoid the shots coming out...No one was hurt which is proabably the reason why I find it amusing watching it back on video...

[adamw]

Did all the 'use this way up' notices fall off?

[pyromaniac303]

That is partly what got me into pyro actually! My dad placed a small aerial salute the wrong way up at our Millenium display, the tube flew off and landed near my feet, and my mum decided he couldn't be trusted and let me have a go at setting some of the smaller ones off. (I was only about 11 at the time, and was not allowed to set off the larger fireworks we had)

I always loved setting them off, and sometimes would get a small box on my birthday.

Every year after that, I have always saved up around bonfire night and buy a month or 2 early from the local fireworks shop, then spend the next month looking at what we have in the box and trying to decide an order to set them off in

I don't bother with that now, just spend the 2 months before November 5th building them