Jessica INSISTED in trawling us all out at the ungodly hour of 10.45pm to go and look at the local bonfire this evening. Unfortunately, David's prediction that it had been lit three times already today proved to be correct (and therefore nothing there to see) so we kept on driving and went to another one about 4 miles away. This was much bigger than our wee village one and as we arrived someone lit the bottom and within seconds the well stacked pile of pallets was alight. There were plenty of people but they must have all walked to the area as we got the car parked immediately in front of the fire.

Apart from two very drunk and foul mouthed young ladies who decided to entertain me from only a few feet away, I had an uninterrupted view of the bonfire for most of the time. The kids were enthralled by all that fire. I suppose, in their total innocence they just see it as an excuse to warm their hands. It is a real shame that there isn't more of a carnival atmosphere at these things. I saw youngsters as young as 12 with bottles in their hands. . .

There wasn't a tyre to be seen on this bonfire, thankfully, and within no time at all the flames were licking towards the heavens. (Jessica asked this evening "Do you think that when Lorna cut the balloons free from Ethan's party that they would have gone high enough in the sky to go all the way to Heaven?)

Iain took the kids nearer the fire but I stayed in the safety of the car with the camera and snapped away. Dude, there were people there with too much drink in them AND it was raining! *strokes new camera lovingly*

So. I have just finished uploading the photos to Flickr and some kind soul has already favourited a couple and commented on them. I looked at my own favourite and had a flash back to the year I was 13.

I had just arrived back in the country days before the Eleventh Night, after living in Scotland for a year and sat listening to a couple of friends talking about the bonfires that were going to be lit that night. They were full of stories about how big they would be and how many of them and how the whole of Belfast would be covered in thousands of bonfires, maybe even HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of them, such was the might of the loyal match strikers.

I went to bed that night and dreamed of bonfires the likes of which you have never seen.

In the middle of the night I woke and went to the window to see if any of the fires were still to be seen. What a sight met me! Even through the rain drops on the window I could see there were indeed hundreds of orange glows around. We lived slightly up a hill and I could see for miles; these orange dots were everywhere! They must have organised them really well because they seemed to be in regular intervals and there was a distinct possibility that they were in straight lines too.

The weird thing was, they were there the next night. And the next. After a while, I questioned how long the bonfires would continue and received a few blank stares.

Fecking street lamps. Ought to be a law against them.

Tags: Bonfire, Jessica, David, Family