Dave Langford inserts the batteries in his Hugo
A wide variety of fans gathered in the grounds of Hardwick House in Whitchurch in Oxfordshire, for the delayed 1996 firing of, well, rather a lot of fireworks by Armageddon Engineering. Delayed because when the originally appointed sunny day in July arrived, the appointed field turned out to be feet deep in mud and water. So the entire thing was rearranged for 7 September.
Despite the obvious impression that this was a purely fannish activity (after all, there were more fans at the Whitchurch fireworks this year than at the 1959 Eastercon) it was actually open to the general public. The Plokta cabal was there, of course, complete with beer tokens and digital camera, to record the event for posterity.
| Arriving early, we pitched our blankets at the front of the field, and went for a guided tour of the fireworks. Alternative pastimes included a barbecue with organic hamburgers and hotdogs, many flavours of organic ice cream, excellent organic real ale, and navigating the field full of organic horseshit. | 
|
|
On the left you can see the Plokta cabal and friends eating ice cream and drinking beer. This picture includes Martin Easterbrook, Margaret Austin, Giulia de Cesare, Steven Cain and Steve Davies. Entertainment was provided by a Very Dodgy Four-Piece Combo called Stillwood, with backing vocals by, well, all sorts of people. High point was a fine rendition of the Wild Rover. |
| The picture on the right is of Richard the Rampant; like most of the firework setters, he was wearing camo. This is the "Oh, I suppose that's why they call it camo" photo. We took another one (not appearing on this web page), in which we stood him against the bright red van. As he hadn't thought to wear van camo, he shows up a great deal better on that one. And that's Chris Suslowicz in the background, pretending not to have seen us. | 
|
|
Caro, depicted left, wasn't too keen on having her photo taken. A much more effective method of avoiding the digital camera was adopted by Jaine & Dave Weddell, Steve & Alice Lawson, and Kate Solomon & Malcolm Davies. They all turned up once it was far too dark to take photos. Or at least, far too dark to take photos of people. Photos of fireworks were a different matter. |
| The high point of the fireworks was probably John Stewart's 40th birthday present. The fireworks on the right are usually let off one or two at a time. Armageddon Engineering, however, wired up two whole cases (79 fireworks) together, some in series, some in parallel. The photo doesn't even begin to give the impression of the 40-foot wall of spinning, shrieking fire that resulted. |  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Above are some of the better pictures of fireworks that we managed to take with the digital camera. Many of the ones we rejected look like flocks of seagulls engaged in formation dancing.
Demon tell us that
humans
and infobots have visited this page
