Fireworks and Sparklers...

November 5th, for those of you not in the know, is Bonfire Night in the UK - or 'Bonny Night' if you are from the North West like me. It is there to celebrate Guy Fawkes attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament and overthrow the government of that day. He failed parlously, unfortunately, and obviously there are no takers to try it again, as we still have a crap Labour government running the country (into the ground...).

Now, Bonfire Night is my favourite night of the year. Yes, Christmas Eve is jolly nice and I do like going out on birthdays, but November 5th is the ultimate night for me. I think it appeals to the arsonist tendencies in me (see post on Fear). It has always been my romantic ideal to spend the night with the man of my dreams, get all snuggly and warm, sip at a hot toddy/coffee/bottle of rum in a brown paper bag, and coo 'oooh' and 'aaaahh' at the beautiful fireworks exploding all over the sky.

Whilst attacking my garden for the winter a few weeks ago, I decided to save all the old wood, leaves and detritus to have our own bonfire. I had carefully tarpaulined it so the old rhododendron bushes would dry out, and thus crackle and spit like my Mother on a bad day. However, after the high winds we had two weeks ago, and due to my dilitory attitude, the tarp blew off and I couldn't be fagged re-jigging it. When I went to buy some fireworks, I was informed that they had sold out (this from the shop which couldn't give them away last year) and was offered three poxy packs of sparklers. Boo!

Armed with a small can of lighter fuel and some cardboard for kindling (Norman wouldn't be a sport and allow me to use his tail) we attempted to get the fire lit. It wasn't really a massive success to be honest, and now there is a huge pile of rotting wood stuck in the middle of my lawn, which I have no doubt will be there until Spring 2010. The sparklers were OK, admittedly, but I only managed to write Agnes twice in the air before they burned out.

#1 took the hump with me because a small spark of ash went sailing right down her low-cut top and hit the bullseye on the cleavage and I laughed. #2 was just concerned in case we ended up baking some hedgehogs which had hibernated in the leaves for the winter.

Yet, one of my ideals did come true last night, actually. I spent the evening with The Man of My Dreams, who presented me with my very own sparkler. OK, you can't write with it - although you could certainly take someone's eye out with it - and if all the blurb is to be believed, it is forever, unlike the handhelds which fizzled out after 30 seconds!

In a very ironic twist of fate, aforesaid Man of Dreams is an ex who has realised what a jolly good thing he was missing out on, how utterly fantastic I am, and a much richer person than I was 12 months ago, due to Job of Dreams, and asked me to marry him. So for all of you thinking I have lied about my singleton status, I'm afraid I haven't - he only contacted me again two weeks ago.

So, there you have it. The blogsite name will stay the same, but there will be a certain ex who won't be being blogged about any more!

PS. For reasons of a professional standing, my name will remain Mildew. His surname is Parsnip.

PPS. Charles Parsnip has asked me to verify my answer to any of you who really couldn't read between the lines...

I said, YES!