You might have thought we had learnt our lesson. Messing around with things that go bang is not a good idea especially when it earns you a walloping from your friends grandfather for half destroying his greenhouse and most of his prize winning vegetables. However, the lesson had obviously not sunk in as a year after doing just that Stuart, Sanjeev and myself were once again dabbling in the dark arts of making things go ‘BOOM!’
My parents and I had moved earlier in the year and were living on the upper floors of my grandparents large Georgian House whilst our new house was being extensively redecorated to remove the kind of wallpaper that even by the middle of the 70s was considered hideous and brown, the like of which can only be seen nowadays in re-runs of ‘The Sweeney’ or ‘Life on Mars’, that the previous owners had so loved. This in turn meant that I was living close to Sanjeev and Stuart, my friends who lived close to my grandparents.
For some reason that summer the craze amongst the local boys was not bubblegum card collecting or something equally safe and not likely to end up in hideous death. It was making bangers from the metal tubes inside pens or small pieces of copper pipe. Naturally being the good, well-behaved lads we were we stayed away from such pursuits and played chess or read encyclopaedias in our spare time. Sorry, that would be a bare-faced lie. We blew stuff up by filling the tubes with scraped matches, crimping the ends and throwing them onto small fires we had built round the back of the derelict church hall just like everybody else.
They made quite impressive bangs and on the whole there were surprisingly few fatalities but then things started to get a bit competitive between us and a couple of the other gangs of neighbourhood kids who also hung round the back of the hall to blow stuff up. In fact it was not so much competitive as an arms race in miniature and we were determined to go nuclear first.
Now getting hold of the Plutonium and other stuff that goes into an atomic bomb was a bit beyond us as ten year olds even if Sanjeevs' dad did work at the local university so we improvised. As it would happen plumbers working on some new houses nearby had left several six inch lengths of one inch copper pipe lying around and these were duly purloined and after using my granddads tools to bend and seal one end, filled with a mixture of gunpowder from the bangers Stuart always seemed to have, all our available supplies of plastic caps, a Vesuvius fountain Sanjeev had saved from the previous years Guy Fawkes party and about three large boxes worth of scraped match heads. In fact, come that Autumn my mother could be constantly heard complaining that all the matches to light the fire seemed to have disappeared from the kitchen cupboard. I of course denied all knowledge. We soon had two ‘bangers’ that were in hindsight, not so much bangers as improvised weapons of mass destruction that nowadays would have the US marines storming our houses under cover of mass airstrikes and an artillery barrage to make sure they did not fall into the wrong hands.
Now, not wanting to seem like right lemons in front of the other kids if our handiwork failed to go boom in a satisfying way we decided that one of them should be sacrificed in a test run much like the Manhattan Project had tested the first atom bomb in the desert. We unfortunately did not have a desert or a test rig. What we did have was the back of Sanjeevs granddads shed and a largish plant pot. Looking back, spending our pocket money on a flight to the Mojave might have been a good idea. We filled the pot with paper, wood and anything else vaguely flammable and added a dash of methylated spirits just to make sure, rested the ‘banger’ with the least amount of our explosive mixture in it across the pot, flung in one of the few matches we had not turned into headless sticks and ran for cover.
We waited and waited a bit longer, none of us were about to go back and then suddenly:
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!
The detonation was far louder than any of us had expected and a not insubstantial mushroom cloud of smoke rose behind the shed. “Yes, it had worked, we could go down to the church hall and show the other kids…hang on, why was there still smoke pouring from behind the shed ?”
Did I forget to mention that this was 1976? The summer had been hot and dry, roads had melted, people were frying eggs on the bonnet of their Ford Capri and the vegetation behind the shed was tinder dry. The explosion had shattered the plant pot and scattered flaming debris amongst the weeds and now flames were licking up the side of the shed. In a moment of the kind of blind panic that only ten year old boys who have just committed an act of inadvertent arson can have we ran back into the house desperately searching for something to put the flames out, totally ignoring the fact that right next to the shed was the garden hose. Anyhow, we had all heeded the dire warnings about not wasting water under pain of horrible death and a stern telling off from the government minister for drought.
In full fire fighting mode we pelted back out clutching a soda siphon and a number of bottles of Panda Pop lemonade that anyone who grew up in the 70s will tell you, were pretty useless at quenching thirst let alone fighting fires due to their rather small size. Desperately we squirted and poured only to be surrounded by clouds of steam smelling vaguely of burnt sugar but the blaze continued. It was perhaps lucky that Sanjeevs dad chose that moment to come home and that he had the presence of mind to totally ignore the dire water wasting warnings and get stuck in with the garden hose whilst we stood guiltily back and tried to pretend that we were not really there.
Five minutes later the fire was well and truly out although the end of the shed looked worse for wear and a swathe of the garden was well and truly crisped. Sanjeevs dad, who was one of the politest and well spoken people I had ever encountered stood looking at us as if unable to say what he was really thinking until finally he managed to slowly and with precise pronunciation say
“What is the meaning of this……..bloody outrage?”
It was no use denying it, we were caught red handed, bang to rights and could not even claim it was caused by plummeting space junk as Stuart had a box of matches, albeit mainly headless, in his pocket. The remainder of that summer holiday was spent reading encyclopaedias and playing chess as we were not allowed outside without parental supervision. Oddly enough though, whilst lying in bed one night the air was rent by an almighty bang from a nearby street. Either our remaining ‘banger’ had found its way into enemy hands or one of the other gangs of kids had managed to up the ante a bit. Whatever it was, ten minutes later I heard sirens and could swear I could smell slightly burnt sugar.
My parents and I had moved earlier in the year and were living on the upper floors of my grandparents large Georgian House whilst our new house was being extensively redecorated to remove the kind of wallpaper that even by the middle of the 70s was considered hideous and brown, the like of which can only be seen nowadays in re-runs of ‘The Sweeney’ or ‘Life on Mars’, that the previous owners had so loved. This in turn meant that I was living close to Sanjeev and Stuart, my friends who lived close to my grandparents.
For some reason that summer the craze amongst the local boys was not bubblegum card collecting or something equally safe and not likely to end up in hideous death. It was making bangers from the metal tubes inside pens or small pieces of copper pipe. Naturally being the good, well-behaved lads we were we stayed away from such pursuits and played chess or read encyclopaedias in our spare time. Sorry, that would be a bare-faced lie. We blew stuff up by filling the tubes with scraped matches, crimping the ends and throwing them onto small fires we had built round the back of the derelict church hall just like everybody else.
They made quite impressive bangs and on the whole there were surprisingly few fatalities but then things started to get a bit competitive between us and a couple of the other gangs of neighbourhood kids who also hung round the back of the hall to blow stuff up. In fact it was not so much competitive as an arms race in miniature and we were determined to go nuclear first.
Now getting hold of the Plutonium and other stuff that goes into an atomic bomb was a bit beyond us as ten year olds even if Sanjeevs' dad did work at the local university so we improvised. As it would happen plumbers working on some new houses nearby had left several six inch lengths of one inch copper pipe lying around and these were duly purloined and after using my granddads tools to bend and seal one end, filled with a mixture of gunpowder from the bangers Stuart always seemed to have, all our available supplies of plastic caps, a Vesuvius fountain Sanjeev had saved from the previous years Guy Fawkes party and about three large boxes worth of scraped match heads. In fact, come that Autumn my mother could be constantly heard complaining that all the matches to light the fire seemed to have disappeared from the kitchen cupboard. I of course denied all knowledge. We soon had two ‘bangers’ that were in hindsight, not so much bangers as improvised weapons of mass destruction that nowadays would have the US marines storming our houses under cover of mass airstrikes and an artillery barrage to make sure they did not fall into the wrong hands.
Now, not wanting to seem like right lemons in front of the other kids if our handiwork failed to go boom in a satisfying way we decided that one of them should be sacrificed in a test run much like the Manhattan Project had tested the first atom bomb in the desert. We unfortunately did not have a desert or a test rig. What we did have was the back of Sanjeevs granddads shed and a largish plant pot. Looking back, spending our pocket money on a flight to the Mojave might have been a good idea. We filled the pot with paper, wood and anything else vaguely flammable and added a dash of methylated spirits just to make sure, rested the ‘banger’ with the least amount of our explosive mixture in it across the pot, flung in one of the few matches we had not turned into headless sticks and ran for cover.
We waited and waited a bit longer, none of us were about to go back and then suddenly:
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!
The detonation was far louder than any of us had expected and a not insubstantial mushroom cloud of smoke rose behind the shed. “Yes, it had worked, we could go down to the church hall and show the other kids…hang on, why was there still smoke pouring from behind the shed ?”
Did I forget to mention that this was 1976? The summer had been hot and dry, roads had melted, people were frying eggs on the bonnet of their Ford Capri and the vegetation behind the shed was tinder dry. The explosion had shattered the plant pot and scattered flaming debris amongst the weeds and now flames were licking up the side of the shed. In a moment of the kind of blind panic that only ten year old boys who have just committed an act of inadvertent arson can have we ran back into the house desperately searching for something to put the flames out, totally ignoring the fact that right next to the shed was the garden hose. Anyhow, we had all heeded the dire warnings about not wasting water under pain of horrible death and a stern telling off from the government minister for drought.
In full fire fighting mode we pelted back out clutching a soda siphon and a number of bottles of Panda Pop lemonade that anyone who grew up in the 70s will tell you, were pretty useless at quenching thirst let alone fighting fires due to their rather small size. Desperately we squirted and poured only to be surrounded by clouds of steam smelling vaguely of burnt sugar but the blaze continued. It was perhaps lucky that Sanjeevs dad chose that moment to come home and that he had the presence of mind to totally ignore the dire water wasting warnings and get stuck in with the garden hose whilst we stood guiltily back and tried to pretend that we were not really there.
Five minutes later the fire was well and truly out although the end of the shed looked worse for wear and a swathe of the garden was well and truly crisped. Sanjeevs dad, who was one of the politest and well spoken people I had ever encountered stood looking at us as if unable to say what he was really thinking until finally he managed to slowly and with precise pronunciation say
“What is the meaning of this……..bloody outrage?”
It was no use denying it, we were caught red handed, bang to rights and could not even claim it was caused by plummeting space junk as Stuart had a box of matches, albeit mainly headless, in his pocket. The remainder of that summer holiday was spent reading encyclopaedias and playing chess as we were not allowed outside without parental supervision. Oddly enough though, whilst lying in bed one night the air was rent by an almighty bang from a nearby street. Either our remaining ‘banger’ had found its way into enemy hands or one of the other gangs of kids had managed to up the ante a bit. Whatever it was, ten minutes later I heard sirens and could swear I could smell slightly burnt sugar.
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