The episode with the bonfire

[Phutters]

A truculent son sees the light

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My trusty assistant, while undoubtedly extremely trusty, is inclined to be a little reluctant to volunteer for the more onerous horticultural duties that require attention around our modest estate.

Generally speaking, he is a trifle sluggish in responding to requests to perform any task, from brushing his hair to setting the table, but we give him the benefit of the doubt because beneath that idle and comprehensively inert exterior there beats a heart of gold.

The offer of money - in amounts wildly disproportionate to the scale of the job in question - meets with only a slightly more encouraging response; if I'd been offered two hundred quid to mow the lawn at 14 years old, I'd have had the ancient Qualcast clattering up and down within ten seconds.

That's the youth of today for you.

Suggesting that he use the strimmer is greeted with something vaguely approaching enthusiasm since few males can resist the allure of an internal combustion engine WFO, especially when attached to something which is flailing dangerously at extremely high speed.

So it was that we found ourselves working away at the top of the garden.

Following another of his customary displays of indolence, I had snipped the wire to his Gamecube controller with a pair of secateurs, turned off the television, and dragged him up there by his ears.

While I dug and cleared and mowed, he shuffled around with his shoelaces undone, muttering to himself and helpfully slashing the heads off prize specimens with a hazel switch.

I felt it was time to play the trump card.

"How about a bonfire?"

Almost before I had got the words out, he had shot down the garden, hurdling the lawnmower in a single bound, disappeared inside the house, reappeared with the big box of jumbo matches and a wad of old newspapers, torn past me in a blur and was frantically scrabbling to open the box, scattering the contents all over the rhubarb.

His fingers were trembling with excitement, and there was the look of a madman in his eyes.

Most of the fuel was fairly dry, but as we both knew that chainsaw oil burns particularly well in a bonfire type scenario, we had soon achieved a satisfactory - if initially rather pungent - conflagration. An ideal kind of fire, really. As the eddying breeze was unhelpfully capricious, it took rather longer than we anticipated to obtain a decently hot base to which we could add the larger type of stick.

My trusty assistant had to be physically restrained on numerous occasions, such was his keenness to poke the fire, but after a little while it was crackling away nicely, without too much smoke to annoy the neighbours in the houses up the hill behind.

In fact, we were remarking on this very thing when something occurred to each of us simultaneously.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

We looked at each other, and we smiled.

The people in one of the houses behind were the very same people who insist of having their own version of Armageddon on Bonfire Night, New Year's Eve, Passover, Lent, the Chinese New Year, Easter, Whitsuntide, St David's Day, Martin Luther King's birthday, the anniversary of the first manned lunar mission, the second Thursday of every month ending in y, r, t, l, e and h and Ramadan. Their fireworks scare our dogs. In fact they scare all the dogs within a five mile radius, and the cacophony of thudding, window-rattling explosions, whizzes and screeches drives all the other neighbours up the wall.

We stoked the fire with gathering enthusiasm, adding more and more fuel. As the fire grew stronger, we were obliged to throw the wood on from further and further away. Our faces glowed ruddy and our eyeballs grew hotter and hotter.

Gradually, the crackling was replaced by a throaty roar as the flames wrinkled the air, sending shimmering waves of heat upwards and distorting the distant view.

From the relative safety of the next parish, we wetted our pointing fingers and held them aloft, testing the wind as it veered, backed, and veered again. Finally, after a few minutes, the breeze steadied in a most acceptable northwesterly direction, and we sprang into action.

As one man we smothered the inferno with huge, damp armfuls of freshly cut, bright green privet.

You could have hidden the entire fleet at anchor in Scapa Flow.

Massive wallowing billows of impenetrable grey smoke rolled through the trees at the top of our garden, and headed directly for the balcony and the open windows of the people in the house behind.

Our targeting was impeccable. First of all the bloke who had been noisily rubbing something down using an orbital sander stopped abruptly, unable to see what he was doing for the choking cloud. Then his wife began to cough.

My trusty assistant looked at me and grinned. I grinned back.

We repaired to the billiard room, lightly kippered, but highly satisfied.

[kite]

And then what ?
It can't end like that.....

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[Phutters]

And then what ?
It can't end like that.....

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I'm sorry. That's how they all end.

It's unsatisfactory, but that's the way it is.

[Doctle Odd]

LOL you sound like my wife mate, make up your own follow up. Maybe the hill-billy family across the tracks dispatched uncle pappy with a protest note...

And then what ?
It can't end like that.....

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[man le-mans]

A truculent son sees the light



The offer of money - in amounts wildly disproportionate to the scale of the job in question - meets with only a slightly more encouraging response; if I'd been offered two hundred quid to mow the lawn at 14 years old, I'd have had the ancient Qualcast clattering up and down within ten seconds..

I offered my son £500 to come to work with me for 1 day. His answer was no I don't need the money. He was 13 at the time