12th on the 13th
Expecting the folks today. We went to Stormont Park yesterday and then walked to the Co-op for our dinner. We had some coupons and i thought that i could use the walk too. We had just return home when the heavens opened as i had never seen them open before. The leak i the roof started up and i really regretted not seeing to it before ma and pa arrived. Especially since i had been on leave over the last two weeks.
It promises more rain today, unusually for the 12th. Or 13th, in this case. The bonfires must have had a good soaking last night. I'm sure a few gallons of petrol will sort that out.
Stormont was really busy. the entire population of Belfast must have been at that park. Actually that's not true. The MACE and Co-op were open and they were really busy. People were sorting themselves out for last minute drinks and a few snacks before the bonfires got going.
I did not know that we had a bonfire so near us. In walking distance in fact. These bonfires are really sights to behold. By the end of the season, they need cranes to place the wooden pallets on them. They are also used as a general catch all incineration scheme. Discarded sofas are a favoured item. Rubber tyres. Old bits of furniture. By the time its ready for firing, you wonder how the health and safety mad culture we live in could allow such a construction. Many are about 30 feet high and very very near housing. In fact i have seen a few built on what are grass verges. One near where i work is practically in the middle of the Outer Ring. The men who do them - and i'm sure they're men - must be engineers in their own right. To not have the fire collapse and kill the very drunk crowd beneath it or indeed set most of the housing estate on fire, is quite a feat. I have not heard of a single injury since i arrived in Norn Iron caused by a collapsing fire - or indeed a fire alarm raised because of the 12th bonfires.
Around the fire springs up a mini festival. Caravans of burgers and fries, hot dogs and fizzy drinks, bouncy castles and other such like merriments, festooned with union jack flags and signs that say Never Surrender, half naked women and men - the former wearing the worst fake tan you've never seen and the latter with the worst sunburns this side of SPF50 - prams and children, boys with the Orange Order collarettes, all gather and celebrate late into the night. It is a mostly working class thing these bonfires. If there is another way of celebrating the 12th - a more sedate and sober, more serious manner, i have not seen it. I don't really count parades, because they're really the start of the celebrations earlier on.
Ma has just called. She's just landed. They'll probably miss the flight they were supposed to make. so they'll be here at 12.20 instead. If they get seats on that flight. Given that it is the 12th they probably will.
It promises more rain today, unusually for the 12th. Or 13th, in this case. The bonfires must have had a good soaking last night. I'm sure a few gallons of petrol will sort that out.
Stormont was really busy. the entire population of Belfast must have been at that park. Actually that's not true. The MACE and Co-op were open and they were really busy. People were sorting themselves out for last minute drinks and a few snacks before the bonfires got going.
I did not know that we had a bonfire so near us. In walking distance in fact. These bonfires are really sights to behold. By the end of the season, they need cranes to place the wooden pallets on them. They are also used as a general catch all incineration scheme. Discarded sofas are a favoured item. Rubber tyres. Old bits of furniture. By the time its ready for firing, you wonder how the health and safety mad culture we live in could allow such a construction. Many are about 30 feet high and very very near housing. In fact i have seen a few built on what are grass verges. One near where i work is practically in the middle of the Outer Ring. The men who do them - and i'm sure they're men - must be engineers in their own right. To not have the fire collapse and kill the very drunk crowd beneath it or indeed set most of the housing estate on fire, is quite a feat. I have not heard of a single injury since i arrived in Norn Iron caused by a collapsing fire - or indeed a fire alarm raised because of the 12th bonfires.
Around the fire springs up a mini festival. Caravans of burgers and fries, hot dogs and fizzy drinks, bouncy castles and other such like merriments, festooned with union jack flags and signs that say Never Surrender, half naked women and men - the former wearing the worst fake tan you've never seen and the latter with the worst sunburns this side of SPF50 - prams and children, boys with the Orange Order collarettes, all gather and celebrate late into the night. It is a mostly working class thing these bonfires. If there is another way of celebrating the 12th - a more sedate and sober, more serious manner, i have not seen it. I don't really count parades, because they're really the start of the celebrations earlier on.
Ma has just called. She's just landed. They'll probably miss the flight they were supposed to make. so they'll be here at 12.20 instead. If they get seats on that flight. Given that it is the 12th they probably will.
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