No laughing matter
Ah, in another few weeks we'll be seeing once more this wonderful pullulation in the hedges and verges. This was Thursday 1st May 1975, the beginning of the most beautiful month of the English year. All except January have their good points, mind you. This must have been quite late in the afternoon. I'd made a special trip to the HMV shop, then on the corner diagonally opposite the Odeon, to buy the Westerns long-playing record, released that day. I've still got it, although I have no means of playing it. Which was the label that used to put out all those train recordings? It would take half an evening to disinter the record from the back of the old boiler cupboard, but it was one of theirs.
I suppose I must've gone home and given the disc a play-through, then I walked three miles to photograph the 13:15 Paddington-Cardiff, which turned up behind D1046 Western Marquis. This would've been taken as I began to make my way home afterwards ...so probably getting on for four o'clock. Alas, I can't make out the number of the "Peak" from the rather grainy photo, and made no note of it at the time. My eyesight would have been good enough in those days, but of course I was squinting through a viewfinder.
I spent many evenings wandering around this semi-countryside just beyond the suburbs of Bristol with the great pal of my youth. One autumnal evening, on the run-up to Bonfire Night, we bought a pocketful of bangers and a box of Swan Vestas. You remember the instructions that used to be printed on bangers: lay the banger on the ground, light the blue touchpaper and retire to a safe distance. Yeah right. In the field off right of this photo, as we walked along the foot of the railway embankment, my friend lit a banger. The touchpaper burned down and the fuse started "fizzing" ...as we used to say. His intention was to throw the banger, hand-grenade fashion, so that it exploded in mid-air. This had to be judged to a nicety, of course. The "fizzing" would intensify as the moment of detonation approached; one had to listen and sieze the precisely correct moment. He reached back to throw, but at that moment the banger went off. Trudging along in the darkness ten yards behind I heard the bang and a torrent of imprecations as my friend hopped around on the turf in a maelstrom of little fiery embers. It was impossible not to laugh ...and I couldn't stop. For the rest of the evening and for days afterwards I'd suddenly start guffawing at the thought of it. It sounds callous, but I could see in the moment that he wasn't hurt. I think he was holding the banger at the end by his fingertips, or perhaps it exploded at the moment of leaving his hand; anyway, there was no injury. In adulthood one's laughter is mostly synthetic; one reproduces the appearance of laughter as a signal that what one has said is meant to be received as humorous, or one extends the courtesy of receiving as funny what has been said by another. There are occasional exceptions, at intervals of many years, but one never as a grown-up laughs spontaneously and uncontrollably as one did in childhood and youth.
No laughing matter
Ah, in another few weeks we'll be seeing once more this wonderful pullulation in the hedges and verges. This was Thursday 1st May 1975, the beginning of the most beautiful month of the English year. All except January have their good points, mind you. This must have been quite late in the afternoon. I'd made a special trip to the HMV shop, then on the corner diagonally opposite the Odeon, to buy the Westerns long-playing record, released that day. I've still got it, although I have no means of playing it. Which was the label that used to put out all those train recordings? It would take half an evening to disinter the record from the back of the old boiler cupboard, but it was one of theirs.
I suppose I must've gone home and given the disc a play-through, then I walked three miles to photograph the 13:15 Paddington-Cardiff, which turned up behind D1046 Western Marquis. This would've been taken as I began to make my way home afterwards ...so probably getting on for four o'clock. Alas, I can't make out the number of the "Peak" from the rather grainy photo, and made no note of it at the time. My eyesight would have been good enough in those days, but of course I was squinting through a viewfinder.
I spent many evenings wandering around this semi-countryside just beyond the suburbs of Bristol with the great pal of my youth. One autumnal evening, on the run-up to Bonfire Night, we bought a pocketful of bangers and a box of Swan Vestas. You remember the instructions that used to be printed on bangers: lay the banger on the ground, light the blue touchpaper and retire to a safe distance. Yeah right. In the field off right of this photo, as we walked along the foot of the railway embankment, my friend lit a banger. The touchpaper burned down and the fuse started "fizzing" ...as we used to say. His intention was to throw the banger, hand-grenade fashion, so that it exploded in mid-air. This had to be judged to a nicety, of course. The "fizzing" would intensify as the moment of detonation approached; one had to listen and sieze the precisely correct moment. He reached back to throw, but at that moment the banger went off. Trudging along in the darkness ten yards behind I heard the bang and a torrent of imprecations as my friend hopped around on the turf in a maelstrom of little fiery embers. It was impossible not to laugh ...and I couldn't stop. For the rest of the evening and for days afterwards I'd suddenly start guffawing at the thought of it. It sounds callous, but I could see in the moment that he wasn't hurt. I think he was holding the banger at the end by his fingertips, or perhaps it exploded at the moment of leaving his hand; anyway, there was no injury. In adulthood one's laughter is mostly synthetic; one reproduces the appearance of laughter as a signal that what one has said is meant to be received as humorous, or one extends the courtesy of receiving as funny what has been said by another. There are occasional exceptions, at intervals of many years, but one never as a grown-up laughs spontaneously and uncontrollably as one did in childhood and youth.