On Being Six Years Old....
July, hot summer holidays, 1962.

When I were a lad, I conned my granny into giving me a threepenny piece to go to the shops to buy myself some sweets. When I got to the Co-op I bought a box of matches ("for me dad's fags"), quoted our Co-op Number (184 - can you remember yours?) and took the matches back to my mates in the local playing fields. There we spent the morning lighting little fires in the grass and stamping them out, burning cornstalks, small twigs and each other, as only small boys can.

When the factory hooter went, it meant time to get home for dinner, so we stamped out the last little fire, hid the rest of the matches in a tree trunk and skedaddled off to meet my dad, walking home from the factory, agreeing to meet up after dinner.

When we got back to the playing fields an hour later we stood and marvelled at the three fire engines and attendant firefighters beating out a series of fires sweeping across the dried grass, not connecting the two. It was fun to watch. We must have stood for a couple of hours watching them put out the fires

It became apparent that this most definitely wasn't fun when two policemen turned up chez Groover with Groover's best mate in tow, bawling his eyes out, pointing at me, telling them all about my lies and pyromanic tendencies.

Dad was summoned from work.

I didn't play out much more that summer.
( The Lone Groover has mal des nuts., Wed 21 Jan 2015, 15:43, 1 reply)

We used to do that too - it was fun.
You must have been unlucky to have set fire to the local woods. Either that or you didn't think of pissing over and around the scorched area. That was fun too, if a little smelly.
(Anthony Burgess' Chocolate Orange, Thu 22 Jan 2015, 6:07, closed)