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Bad Penny Blues
Oct. 31st, 2024 10:50 pmWent to the HMS Sultan bonfire and firework display. There was an impressive plethora of street food stalls this year. I got a tasty halloumi wrap from ‘The Cheeky Greek’.
Decided to queue for a donut for afters. They were £2 for one, so I reached for the four 50ps in my pocket. I held them in my hand working up the queue, but when I reached the counter the four coins had become three. Dumbfounded, I scanned the ground but to no avail. The donut van did take card, and the donut was first class, but the loss aggravated me deeply. The lost 50p was a Paddington at the Palace one, and I love passing on commemorative coins to keep them circulating.
Standing to one side eating my donut, and after, I cast my eyes across all the ground going back from the van - what ground wasn’t covered by queuing punters’ feet - drawing curious glances from several of said punters. Nothing doing. Perhaps somebody had snaffled the coin soon after it hit the ground. Otherwise I guess one of the litter pickers will find it when the site is being cleared after the event. I muttered “That can be his Christmas bonus.”
I went to join the crowd lining the roped-off part of the field waiting for the bonfire in a grey mood. Commemorative coins do not come along very often and passing them on is one of the few little pleasures I have amid drab mundane everyday life. I’d lucked out getting four in the last bag I drew out of the bank; having been careless enough to lose one, the spirits are not likely to be kind enough to bestow any on me again. I fully expect my future bags to consist entirely of regular issues :(
A local radio DJ acted as compère, welcoming us all, asking for people from different districts of Gosport, getting us to applaud the Royal Navy for putting the event on, and getting us to countdown to the lighting of the bonfire. The bonfire, based on wooden pallets, with two unusual-looking guys on top, went up well and kept a good blaze going all evening. There were massive cheers as each of the guys in turn fell off the top and onto the next tier of blazing pallets.
The firework display was a succession of brightly coloured soaring rockets exploding into scattering sparkles, with the odd group of star shells. A selection of music appropriate for Halloween played, including Ghostbusters and Alice Cooper’s Poison, interspersed with announcements in a wizardly voice. When the wizard announced that the show was nearly over and that “you should all know this song, so sing along”, I expected Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett and the Cryptkickers’ Monster Mash but it was AC/DC’s Highway To Hell.
I made my way over to where the announcer had said the site’s only exit would be. It rapidly became clear that we were all being held. As we inched nearer to the exit, the lady next to me and I noticed that the lone exit was a tiny gate through which people were leaving literally one at a time. With hundreds of us waiting to go, it was the mother of all bottlenecks. It brought back the worst side of going to football in the 90s.
The lady next to me and I exchanged comments on the ridiculousness of having just one soppy little gate for the whole crowd. That arrangement had never been in place before as far as either of us could remember. Of course, the ground we were on, right up to the gate, was a quagmire.
Decided to queue for a donut for afters. They were £2 for one, so I reached for the four 50ps in my pocket. I held them in my hand working up the queue, but when I reached the counter the four coins had become three. Dumbfounded, I scanned the ground but to no avail. The donut van did take card, and the donut was first class, but the loss aggravated me deeply. The lost 50p was a Paddington at the Palace one, and I love passing on commemorative coins to keep them circulating.
Standing to one side eating my donut, and after, I cast my eyes across all the ground going back from the van - what ground wasn’t covered by queuing punters’ feet - drawing curious glances from several of said punters. Nothing doing. Perhaps somebody had snaffled the coin soon after it hit the ground. Otherwise I guess one of the litter pickers will find it when the site is being cleared after the event. I muttered “That can be his Christmas bonus.”
I went to join the crowd lining the roped-off part of the field waiting for the bonfire in a grey mood. Commemorative coins do not come along very often and passing them on is one of the few little pleasures I have amid drab mundane everyday life. I’d lucked out getting four in the last bag I drew out of the bank; having been careless enough to lose one, the spirits are not likely to be kind enough to bestow any on me again. I fully expect my future bags to consist entirely of regular issues :(
A local radio DJ acted as compère, welcoming us all, asking for people from different districts of Gosport, getting us to applaud the Royal Navy for putting the event on, and getting us to countdown to the lighting of the bonfire. The bonfire, based on wooden pallets, with two unusual-looking guys on top, went up well and kept a good blaze going all evening. There were massive cheers as each of the guys in turn fell off the top and onto the next tier of blazing pallets.
The firework display was a succession of brightly coloured soaring rockets exploding into scattering sparkles, with the odd group of star shells. A selection of music appropriate for Halloween played, including Ghostbusters and Alice Cooper’s Poison, interspersed with announcements in a wizardly voice. When the wizard announced that the show was nearly over and that “you should all know this song, so sing along”, I expected Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett and the Cryptkickers’ Monster Mash but it was AC/DC’s Highway To Hell.
I made my way over to where the announcer had said the site’s only exit would be. It rapidly became clear that we were all being held. As we inched nearer to the exit, the lady next to me and I noticed that the lone exit was a tiny gate through which people were leaving literally one at a time. With hundreds of us waiting to go, it was the mother of all bottlenecks. It brought back the worst side of going to football in the 90s.
The lady next to me and I exchanged comments on the ridiculousness of having just one soppy little gate for the whole crowd. That arrangement had never been in place before as far as either of us could remember. Of course, the ground we were on, right up to the gate, was a quagmire.
