An Ancient Chinese Recipe (for Self-Indulgence).

I've had a rough week, for reasons that are somewhat obtuse and, in retrospect, kinda stupid. I've been getting pissy over events that are long since passed, and to quote my man Bill, "what's gone and what's past help should be past grief." So there's a pleasing irony in the fact I'm dealing with said grief by remembering past times. Today is Guy Fawke's Day, and nothing, but NOTHING, helps deal with heartache like celebrating the brutal execution of a political dissident.

Bonfire Night is my second favourite annual festival (so I like Christmas, big whoop, wanna fight about it?). I like it because I like fireworks: lights and colours and big noises (which makes me sound like a toddler, but I'm not ashamed). And I like it because it gets you together with people, and it's an excuse to be outside once the clocks have gone back, and for the look on happy children's faces and all that other holiday special crap. More than that, I like lighting fireworks.

I mean, come one. They're big explosives that you get to set off in your own back garden! I'm not even slightly military minded, I think any obsession with guns and playing soldiers past pre-pubescence is lame (unless you're actually a soldier, in which case it's OK, I guess). But even a whiny beatnik pacifist like myself can appreciate the atavistic joy of making really loud noises once in a while. Bonfire night is my one chance to muck about with what is essentially brightly coloured gunpowder, and I plan to make the most of it.

Lighting fireworks is also another of those enjoyable tasks that menfolk have selfishly adopted for themselves by labelling them somehow arduous or dangerous. I've mentioned this once before in regards to my own love for flat-pack furniture. Lighting fireworks is a job for men, big manly men, possibly with full beards and a woodsman's axe balanced on their shoulder.

Fireworks can be dangerous, of course. Children should not be allowed to play with them, but as previously stated on this very blog, kids are idiots. Every year the fire service roll out the same adverts to be shown after Blue Peter (or its modern, ultra-violent equivalent, I don't keep up with what the little urchins watch). Don't hold lit fireworks in your hand. Don't keep fireworks in your pocket. Don't make dens inside bonfires. Don't throw fireworks. It's possible that you might have to explain this sort of thing on one occasion, to someone who had never encountered fireworks before, but it appears necessary to remind some folks each time. Every year hundreds of people are injured, sometimes seriously, by fireworks, but in almost every case it is less of a genuine accident and more of the 'which-one-of-you-was-playing-silly-buggers' sort of accident. If you understand what an explosive actually is, but still need to be reminded not to make it explode about your person, then you are not mentally cogent enough to handle lighting fireworks.I would boldly state that for most of us, it's not a hugely dangerous or difficult task.

But I play along with the fallacy (or should that be phallacy, am I right?) because I like setting off fireworks and I don't want anybody else to get to do it. I know that if, say, my little sister were given the task of setting off a rocket, she wouldn't just ignite the fuse with the firework still in her hand, and then wave it in my direction with a vague 'what-can-you-do' expression. Instead she would read the instructions on the packet carefully and follow them to the best of her ability, always paying due attention and respect to the brightly coloured bomb she'd been entrusted with detonating.

I'll pretend to her, and myself, and anyone else in the room, that fireworks require some modicum of skill. And in truth, I do have some area of expertise in the field. I spent all this morning out in the rain building launch stations for tonight's display, but this was largely to ward off my own blue mood, and probably not entirely necessary. I could probably have knocked it all together while everyone else was putting their wellies on.

So every year I put on a fireworks display because I like fireworks, and other people come round and tell me what a clever chap I am and pat me on the back. Sometimes they bring food and get this: occasionally they bring money. Actual cashpounds! For something I'd have done anyway! (To be fair, there's no more obvious waste of money than fireworks. If notes burnt in different colours you might as well just chuck them on the bonfire.)

This year it's even better, because I'm staying with my father till the spring, and the idiot bought the fireworks for me! I've barely had to spend a penny. And at the end of it I will stand, fresh glass of wine in hand, and accept the thanks of my adoring public with a bashful smile, telling them that it was nothing really, and that I was just happy to help. And they'll tell each other what a smashing young man I am, even though it really wasn't anything, and I was just happy to help, and in fact I'd have been a bit pissed off at their presumptuousness if they'd come wandering down the garden to give me a hand.

There will be a few people in the crowd who are in on it. A few, mostly men, who will be secretly wishing that it was they, rather than I, running boldly amid the smoke with a slow burning wick in one gloved hand. They won't be able to complain, though, because everyone else is having fun. I know their grief well, and sympathise. But if they think they're helping with my fireworks they can naff right off. Have a sparkler, mate, and shut your cake-hole.

"Yeah, all right mate, no-one likes a show-off." (Image copyright Ed O'Keeffe.)