FIREWORKS FLY

Brigg's communal bonfire will be held on Saturday, November 1 at the Recreation Ground, off Wrawby Road.
Turn the clock back 40 years, or more, and there was no organised get-together for the town. Families would build their own bonfires in the back garden and stage their own limited display of fireworks, made by firms like Brocks, Standard and Lion.
A Laws or White's pop bottle would hold the small rockets upright, prior to lighting the blue touch-paper, with Catherine wheels nailed to the door of the garden shed.
Gingerbread (parkin) and baked potatoes were served, with hot soup. But however much parents tried to spin things out, these families displays would not last long.
The Guy Fawkes, fashioned from old clothes, would be consumed by the flames in a few minutes. And how tiresome it must have been for mums and dads, back then, to hear a knock at the back door and find a group of kids demanding: "Penny for the Guy!"
The home-made effigy would be trundled round the streets in an old pushchair or pram, or maybe shoved into a soapbox or cart.
Mike Tierney's or Ernie Taylor's shops were the favoured places for buying fireworks back then.
Penny bangers and loud repeated airbombs were the boys' favourites and disturbed many a peaceful evening in the run up to Bonfire Night which, back then, was observed on November 5. Unlike the current practice of finding the nearest available Saturday, as weekend will attract a bigger crowd.

Our colourful picture was taken at Brigg Recreation Ground during Bonfire Night in November, 1997.