slow shutter light pictures

IMGP6252
Originally uploaded by bluedevi

I grew up with fireworks and a bonfire on Halloween, not Guy Fawkes' Night. And we were often the only family in the neighbourhood to have fireworks, because my dad worked in Immigration at Dublin Airport. In the run up to Halloween he and his colleagues confiscated armloads of fireworks which people were attempting to bring in through customs without declaring them (ah, strange innocent time when you could take fireworks on a plane...). Then they'd divvy them up and bring them home for their kids. Sometimes we'd have a dry night, a roaring bonfire and an awesome fireworks display. More often, it seems, it'd be pouring with rain. Ivan and I would dash outside anyway in the witch and ghost masks we recycled every year. I remember the clingy feeling and slightly musty smell of a damp sheet from the years when I was the ghost. I remember Dad swearing at the damp wicks. But when it worked it was wonderful.

So this year on Halloween the original plan was to watch Nightmare On Elm Street at Dan's, though I had a niggling feeling that I didn't want to be indoors. Then I had a brainstorm walking past the row of fireworks special offer signboards outside Boswell's. Shortly after that I texted him to come to mine instead, and to wear shoes, not trainers. When he came round, after dark, we set out across the ring road and into Shotover woods - which were very, very dark, lit only by a murky puddle of light from our torch. As we tried to find our way along the paths by memory, hoping we wouldn't take a wrong turn, we went from trying not to think about The Blair Witch Project to holding the torch under our chins and quavering "I'm sorry, I'm sorry to everyone" within the space of about two minutes. When we got to the field I'd had in mind, spooky tendrils of mist were rising off it. It was laughably perfect.

We set off five big rockets which, in a reversal of how these things usually work, were higher and brighter and more loudly banging than the ones of my childhood. Dashing back out of range, breathless and laughing, after lighting the fuses. At one point, thinking we heard a large beast moving in the woods behind us. (Great Cthulhu! He has arisen!) After the last rocket, a squiggly blue screamer, we took photos of each other attempting to make pictures with sparklers. I like the almost-pentagram.

(But this lot outdid us).

Then back through the woods and home to fresh-baked bread and cheese and beer.

***

Now that was doing winter properly. Since then I've lost the thread of it a bit. I am theoretically cheating at NaNoWriMo (working on two half-done books, not one new one), and have got to nearly 10k but am increasingly realising I don't write that way any more. Work is currently all about the petty little struggles with other tutors who think they can turf me out of my timetabled slots that I've been in for weeks (they're wrong), with students who won't do their homework, and with another new student who can't.

She's a middle-aged housewife who's doing a Foundation of Computer Systems course at Brookes. On the phone it sounded as if she wanted to catch up on some A-level stuff. I got to her house and it turned out that, firstly, she doesn't know what any of these things are: software, hardware, devices, input, output, the CPU, binary numbers, memory... Secondly, she has a project designing a circuit to display a range of different letters on a digital display, using Boolean algebra and Karnaugh maps, for Monday. "You explain me?" she asked eagerly, notebook and pencil at the ready for me to give her the answer. "I want to pass." I was crap at this stuff at university and I certainly can't do it now. I said as much to her when I saw her yesterday. I don't know if she understood.

Bleh. But! I am going to Planet Angel this weekend. This should probably be the last trip to London for a while, as I am spectacularly skint. But I have to go to Gosh! Comics first, to pick up a few quid from Epiphanies sales (yay!). I am left with a bit of a gulf between business hours and club o'clock. braisedbywolves was making vague noises about pub...