![](//photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8022/1412/200/firework1A.jpg)
Since Hodmandod senior is a research chemist and spent his youth in his garden shed endeavouring, with some success, to make explosives, he anticipates bonfire night with relish. Every year a box of fireworks is brought home with some celebration and we eagerly inspect the selection: Siberian Snowfall, Subarctic Blizzard, Vesuvius Spring.
![](//photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8022/1412/200/firework%202A.jpg)
I imagine there must be a firework designer somewhere - 'blue sparks on a background of white flame punctuated by showers of red' he might write and then choose and pack the chemicals accordingly. I imagine them in layers inside the cardboard tube like different coloured sand from the Isle of Wight. Then I think of all the experiments and demonstrations I used to do with my pupils and students - the magnesium burning with the intense white flame and the beautiful green and blue of the burning copper salt. Some colours are easy to get, some are impossible.
![](//photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8022/1412/200/Catherine%20WheelA.jpg)
Alongside the ground fireworks there are always a good few rockets (a particular passion), and always, my favourite, a Catherine wheel. I came across the origin of the Catherine wheel in a rather excellent novel I have spent the entire day reading - SUMMIT AVENUE by Mary Sharratt. Although today's Catherine wheels are named after the wheel upon which St Catherine was martyred, original Catherine wheels were part of a pagan rite. On the longest day the sun was worshipped by sending burning wheels down a hillsidet into the mill stream below.
![](//photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8022/1412/200/Jack%20%26fireworkA.jpg)
We always round things off with sparklers - writing our names in the air.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are subject to moderation.
<< Home