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A good bonfire

Now in my second year of blogging, I sometimes get that deja vu feeling. We have a number of blog worthy fires throughout the year, but there really is nothing like a good autumn bonfire, especially after the clocks have gone back and the dark evenings creep up on you. Both my Grandad, who was born on 31st October and my Dad, loved a good bonfire. There was constantly a bonfire under construction, more often than not to be burnt on a late Sunday afternoons.

The largest and most dramatic bonfires were those when the dried out runner bean vines were burnt at the end of October. It was a bit of an event really that ran into the bonfire nights of early November. It's a marvelous time at the end of the warm weather, where you don't really need a coat and there is an abundance of apples. I grew up in a small village, living just around the corner from my grandparents who were lucky enough to have 3 old apples trees in their garden. 27 Orchard Road was clearly a beautiful orchard at one point and as my father was born in that house, those trees were a really special part of growing up, as were the bonfires.

So following in a bit of a family tradition, we had our own spectacular bonfire this afternoon, in celebration of all things autumnal, spooky and Octoberish. Armed with marshmallows, hot chocolate, 'witches' fingers' bread sticks and popcorn, we headed up to the allotment this afternoon. We didn't actually have anything substantial to burn but collected everything that had dried out so far. It was enough to put on a fabulous roaring fire for about 5 minutes which was just enough time to toast marshmallows.

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