Halloween....

[LP]

Fond memories! A mate of mine dropped a bunger into an empty jerrycan. Ended up with no eyelashes and a very interesting hairdo.

And so the rest of the world must be constrained to protect the idiots from themselves! ;D

A Nasty Teabagging (Trust me read on!);
I worked at a place once that banned teabags outside the lunchroom, because a moron dropped a piping hot teat bag into somebodies back pocket and it scalded them, apparently being branded with Liptons on your ar5e is quite distressing! The moron kept his job, the rest of us had to suffer because of that by not being allowed to brew a cuppa on the run!

In life we can probably be fairly lucky. As kids many of us played on dirt mounds or sand dunes with plastic soldiers, tanks and artillery that fired Tom Thumbs, caps and other incendiary gadgets. Roman Candle guns were very popular around Guy Fawkes. Most of us survived unharmed, we didn't cause bush fires, burn down houses or kill the cat, the dirt was probably full of asbestos or heavy metals and most likely more dangerous than the explosives.

Now if you see a kid with a Guy Fawkes mask you probably have to be more worried that they might be hacking your bank account!

[rocky]

Guy Fawkes was great fun back when WE were kids. A different time and different culture. God help us all if todays generation got there hands on anything explosive.
Halloween has always been a bug bear with me. Hate the slow Americanization of our country (lets not forget Valentines day). I used to have constant battles with my kids about it. Called me a wet blanket and a scrooge. Couldn't understand my point of view. One year they were old enough to make the effort of going to the store to pick up the lollies and whatnot for the neighbourhood kids when they came. That lasted a year. Now the "need not apply" sign is back up.

[Gointocarlton]

Guy Fawkes was great fun back when WE were kids. A different time and different culture. God help us all if todays generation got there hands on anything explosive.
Halloween has always been a bug bear with me. Hate the slow Americanization of our country (lets not forget Valentines day). I used to have constant battles with my kids about it. Called me a wet blanket and a scrooge. Couldn't understand my point of view. One year they were old enough to make the effort of going to the store to pick up the lollies and whatnot for the neighbourhood kids when they came. That lasted a year. Now the "need not apply" sign is back up.

My daughters have always been the scrooges. Every year they'd want to put up a sign "no trick or treating here", I always said to them there is no need to do that as I thought it was rude, just politely don't answer the door as if no one is home.

[DJC]

In our neighbourhood, households that want to take part in Halloween put decorations by the front gate.  The children know not to bother at un-decorated properties … and it’s usually around 60m from the gate to the house ?

I think that arrangement would work well elsewhere.

[dodge]

Bit of fun for the kids - they get to dress up and walk around the neighbourhood, go to houses that welcome them for trick or treat and everyone is in a good mood and having a good time.

No one is bothered if you participate or don't.

The reserve that I grew up across the road from had a row of pine trees.  Every Guy Fawkes night the fire truck was required to come to put out a fire in the pine trees, caused by fireworks.

[DJC]

When I was a young lad, we had two bonfire nights; British Empire Day and Guy Fawkes.  Fireworks usually went on sale about a month before bonfire night and unsold stock was available for a week or so after bonfire night.

If you saved your paper round money and didn’t go all out on bonfire nights, you could have fireworks from the start of May through till the end of November.

Threepenny bungers were phased out around the time I was old enough to buy fireworks so penny bungers were the most powerful crackers I used.  Apart from throwing them at friends and enemies, blowing up letterboxes, deterring savage dogs, and generally causing havoc, they provided the propellant charge for cracker guns that fired marbles or large ball bearings over impressive distances.

One year we all stocked up on skyrockets, reversed the handlebars on our bikes and fired skyrockets at each other as well as unsuspecting pedestrians and motorists.

Bonfire night was held on the railway reserve at the end of our street.  We collected flammable material in the weeks before bonfire night and made a huge pile.  It included discarded furniture, car tyres and other stuff that shouldn’t be burned.  Most participants received minor burns to go with a lung full of toxic smoke and there were always a couple of folk who got hit by skyrockets.  As far as I can remember, only one kid from our neighbourhood suffered a serious eye injury.

[northernblue]

No. I meant to live there.

Again it was never really cheap, esp if you were a renter, always had high rentals here.
Freight hurts us and certainly will for the foreseeable future but if you don’t need a Myer or David Jones in your life you’re fine as we’ve got most of the other big stores.
Commuting is easy too.

[northernblue]

Penny bungers when separated into singletons were excellent when squewered through a cumquat, lit and lobbed over parked cars, well me and my mate thought so but it seemed his older sisters boyfriend didn’t… just can’t figure some people… ?

[Thryleon]

We used to make home made fireworks out of a small pringles can, sparklers (one in tact for a fuse, the rest stripped into the container) and a battery of some kind.  Light them in the middle of an oval and watch from a safe distance.  Fireworks were never easy to come by, but we found a way.

[DJC]

My last day at Newlands High School was marked by an assembly of all form 6 students during which the principal gave us a pep talk about our futures.  His talk was punctuated by a series of explosions from different parts of the school.

One of my mates had taped sticks of incense to penny bungers and attached the wicks at different points on the incense sticks, creating time delay fuses of different durations.  The bungers were placed in lockers all round the school and the incense sticks ignited.