Childhood secrets
6:53 a.m. -- 2009-05-15
When I was a kid, I used to put together these little 'kits' of useful bits and pieces that I would carry, everywhere I went. I was waiting for there to be an emergency in which I could be a well-equipped, resourceful hero... but nothing resembling an Enid Blighton story ever happened in my neck of the woods.
A Swan Vestas matchbox was the ideal size for one of these secret emergency kits. Covered in paper, so as not to look like a matchbox. (Adults have a tendency to take matches off children, for some reason...)
And what do you put inside this little matchbox? Well, some matches for starters, obviously. The heads dipped in wax to make them waterproof.
A fishing hook, on a short length of line. A razor blade, wrapped in tape to keep it safe until you need it. A needle and some thread. Maybe a safety pin or two. A sticking plaster. A pencil stub, and some scraps of paper. A couple of birthday cake candles. String, rubber bands, some caps... and some more exotic things like magnesium foil strips, when I got older and was able to pilfer them from chemistry lessons.
Any crap that came in Christmas crackers, such as a miniature screwdriver, was happily added to the collection. All the metal items were magnetised, (a) stopping them clinking together and (b) allowing them to be used as an improvised compass if necessary. You can float a razor blade or a needle in a cup of water, and it'll swing to point north.
At one point, I popped open my (broken) digital watch, and removed its innards. I filled the cavity with dribbled wax, plus a wick and three (shortened) strike-anywhere matches. I tried it out, and it worked pretty well. (Nowadays, a kid would just switch on his mobile 'phone if he needed some light, I suppose. More effective - and it can tell you the time - but much less interesting. Says a lot about modern life, really.)
I was so damn prepared... but nothing exciting ever happened. Except one time, years later, when I was on a guided tour of the sewers under Vienna (have you seen 'The Third Man'?) Predictably... I didn't have a light source with me, on that occasion. None of us did. Our guide only had one flashlight, which wasn't very generous, between about twenty of us.
Although it seems there were always matches involved in my childhood schemes, I wasn't a foolish fire-starter. I made use of fire, but I was generally cautious � although lucky to keep my eyebrows intact, perhaps. When the other kids were buying fireworks and letting them off, I was carefully dismantling them, and making devices of my own.
I mean... and I think this shows a lot about my character... that the young me preferred to take apart a perfectly good firework that would have safely flown five hundred feet up in the air and done its job. Instead, I'd make an array of lame-duck fireworks of my own, using the gunpowder I liberated. I was fascinated to learn more about how they worked, and dismantling them was the best way I could think of. I'd cut into a rocket or a banger, tip out the black powder, and test a small quantity of it to see how much 'oomph' it had. I found that different formulations produced a bang, pretty sparkles in various colours, or rocket propulsion. Each was bagged and stored away for use in my own fireworks. I probably had a fairly hazardous bedroom, to be honest.
One favourite experiment was to remove the 'bang' part of a rocket, and replace it with a smaller second stage, just like NASA's space rockets have, in an effort to get more height from a launch. Quite why this should matter, I have no idea, since if successful it just means the splash of colour is further away, and less impressive. Kids are not necessarily wise. Another oft-repeated experiment was to attach a rocket motor to a balsa aeroplane and launch it in the daytime, so it would climb hard, and then glide for miles. Of course, the flames burnt the tail off as often as not, resulting in some disappointing flights.
I also found that it was possible to construct explosive airgun pellets by stuffing the cavity with powdered red-tip match heads and gunpowder, and sealing everything up with a dab of glue. (They make a �crack� noise if you hit something hard.) In a country where firearms are tightly controlled, we still managed to have some illicit fun. Not all of England's woodland is green and pleasant: it's possible to sneak away from the bridle paths and the dog-walkers, and reach places where one could enjoy such pastimes without being disturbed... and where it wasn't necessarily a bad thing to be armed.
(I should explain that this wasn't all I ever did. Fireworks were generally only available in the run-up to November the 5th, and only if you could find a shopkeeper who was prepared to sell explosives to children. I'd obtain a supply of materials, and then try to make it last all year, which may explain my interest in miniaturisation.)
At seventeen, I built what military professionals might call a multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) into a matchbox. Each tiny rocket was made from a small strip of silver foil, formed round the end of a Meccano rod. They nestled side by side, such that when you lit the fuse, the flame worked its way past the tail end of each rocket in turn. They weren't stabilised very well, and flew... wherever they wanted. It was impressive, dangerous, and fun. That experiment wasn't repeated; we were happy to have survived the resulting barrage.
Fortunately I didn't know how to ignite such things electrically at that age. I could tell you the answer, now, but I fear that might be irresponsible. If I'd known it at seventeen, my next step would have been to make a rocket-launching pistol, I'm sure.
It's really no wonder that I ended up working in the defence industry, for a time. What is a missile, after all, but a glorified firework? Big boys' toys.
And when I wasn't building secret agent emergency kits, testing modified airgun ammunition and learning just how dangerous optimism can be when trying to spin-stabilise a rocket... I was trying on my sister's dresses.
When I think back, now, I wonder what on Earth my parents must have thought of me. I never let them 'in' on my teenage years at all. They couldn't know about the pyrotechnics or the airgun, because they'd have taken them off me - and I certainly wasn't going to start cross-dressing when they were in. All they ever really knew about me was that I played a few computer games, read library books, built models and made a hasty, bad job of my homework. That wasn't me at all, really, but it's all they got.
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