This Old Shirt of Mine

                              Jimmy put his bangers in the top pocket of his jacket where they were less likely to get damaged. The telltale blue paper twists of the fuses stood out like a row of medal ribbons. Terry walked ahead to the bottom of the Street, at the corner of Albany Cottages. Jimmy was ten yards behind Terry and as he turned the corner he saw a banger sparking away on the pavement. He stepped back smartly as the thing exploded with a satisfying crack. He took out his matches, which every kid carried at this time of year, lit one of his bangers and charged round the corner once more holding the fizzing firework at arms length behind him. Terry was still laughing a few yards up the Street, and he dashed off when he saw Jimmy coming. Jimmy threw the banger at the fleeing Terry and it rolled in the gutter and exploded.

                   "That’s two good ones," said Terry, "These bangers ain’t bad at all. Look at that, it’s split wide open."

                   Terry picked up the dead firework, blackened and warm and smelling of sulphurous promise. The loudest bangers exploded in this way, the least satisfying ones just blew the plug or the fuse casing out of the ends with a loud ‘phut’. A sash went up and an Albany woman stuck her head out of her ground floor bedroom window. Jimmy and Terry, being Cornwall kids were not familiar with the temperament of Albany Cottagers, and so they ran off up the Street followed by some advice about what they could do with bloody Guy Fawkes. They turned sharply into the Queens Gate and looked back down the street. All clear.

                   They got their money’s worth out of the remaining bangers, which kept them occupied for the rest of the day. They dropped one down a drain hole to achieve a less than satisfying deep ‘wumph’ sound. They set off another banger in a crack in the mortar of the staircase wall in the Queens’ gate, hoping unsuccessfully to make a bigger hole. They launched their fifth banger into the big puddle in the dank Airey between Cornwall and Queens Cottages. It fizzed along like a slow torpedo, sparks bubbling through the water, and the explosion caused a minor waterspout and an echo bouncing between the parallel blocks of flats. Jimmy and Terry got out of the Airey in a hurry and took their last banger over the bomb ruins on the other side of the Street.

                   A bonfire was being built on the widest part of the ruins between the Street and Britannia Row, which ran parallel to it. A group of older children were piling up planks, old furniture, chestnut palings and all kinds of boxes under the supervision of Raymond Bishop. Peter Sullivan, the young hard case from Quinn Buildings was organising the bomb site bonfire, but while he was at work Raymond was standing in. Jimmy and Terry knew that they would not be forced to help with building the bonfire, as this was a privilege reserved for Peter Sullivan’s gang and hangers-on.

                   "Piss off you two," said Raymond as they came up to the mountain of combustibles.

                   "We’re just looking," said Terry.

                   "Well don’t," said Raymond, and he shoved Terry in the chest.

                   So they sloped off to the bottom of the ruins by the side wall of Albert’s sweet shop. The shop was a converted terraced house whose neighbours on both sides had been flattened by the Luftwaffe. Why Albert’s was spared the Cottagers could not imagine, as he was a miserable bugger who diddled the kids if he could. When he died his wife carried on diddling and the shop became known as Peggy’s. The ruins next to Albert’s back yard were in the shadow of the high back wall of the hall belonging to St. James’ Church, and there were still puddles of rainwater lying around, not yet evaporated. Terry and Jimmy got down on their hands and knees and chose a likely puddle for enlarging. Firstly they piled up dirt and stones into a line along one edge of the puddle, and then they dug a shallow channel from a slightly higher puddle which then drained into the first making it twice as deep. After half an hour of exercising admirable civil engineering skills they were ready to breach the dammed puddle. Jimmy gently pushed his last banger low down into the dry side of the dirt dam and Terry began to whistle the ‘Dam Busters’ March’. He lit the fuse and Jimmy spread his arms and made growling noises like a squadron of Lancaster bombers.

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