Playing with fire…

Ned and I had a fascination with fire when we were kids, or maybe it was just me.

No, it was definitely the two of us.

Once we had attained the age of ten years of age we were adjudged to be competent to be left in the house on our own of a Saturday night while our parents took themselves off to their club in Meanwood where they could drink beer, play bingo and watch “turns” safe in the knowledge that their ten year old son who had a bright head on his shoulders would look after his eight year old brother, not fight each other at all, and have themselves tucked up safely in bed at the appointed time.

And of course Ned and I did all of that, we were good kids, no really.

Our parents would roll home blind drunk, shrieking with laughter, our dad singing a Sinatra song whilst walking into furniture (and to think he’d driven home like that), and our mum would come into our bedroom to see us both tucked up in bed and fast asleep, she’d coo something like “aww, they’re such good boys…” and tiptoe out of our room closing the door quietly behind her, happy in the knowledge that we were big boys now and could safely be left in the house of a Saturday night.

How do I know all of this ?

Because we were still awake of course, just pretending to be asleep, we’d run into the bedroom and jumped into bed as soon as we saw their car headlights parking in the driveway.

It was the same routine every Saturday evening, we’d both be sat there watching the end of  The Generation Game when our parents left the house leaving behind a bar of Old Jamaica chocolate or maybe a Frys Chocolate Cream each and a bottle of pop, and then, as their car left the top of the road we’d have a fight.

It started the night off right did a fight and when it was over and I’d won, we’d sit on the floor and decide what to do next, invariably it would be a game that involved some small plastic soldiers and some matches.

Airfix produced boxed sets of very small soldiers, a British Infantry boxed set, or an American Marine boxed set, and for those evenings when all you wanted to do was set fire to things, a boxed set of Japanese soldiers.

We had loads of them and the favourite playground was the kitchen sink which we would fill with water until the water overflowed the sink and filled the draining board, some boats in the sink and a whole platoon of Japanese soldiers in the shallows on the draining board and you had your very own Iwo Jima beach bloodbath.

The secret to these fights int he kitchen sink was the fact that our dad repaired clocks and watches at home for cash money and to repair and clean clocks and watches properly you need a spirit based fluid to lift off the oil and grease – thats where the Ronsonol lighter fluid comes into the story.

He bought Ronsonol in its largest cans, each with a tiny spout so that a thin jet of lighter fluid could be squirted into your Ronson cigarette lighter – except of course that our dad didn’t use it for cigarette lighter use, he squirted it over watch parts in a small metal boiled sweet tin, then he’d put the tin lid back on and use the fluid bath for the next batch of repairs.

Until we found that Ronsonol burns like, well, like cigarette lighter fluid should burn actually.

One evening we tipped a small amount of lighter fluid out of the sweet tin into the kitchen sink Iwo Jima battle scene and of course it spread like, well, like oil on water. It only took the slightest hint of a flame from a lighted match for the whole Iwo Jima beach scene to explode with a huge and very impressive “WHOOOMP” and there was our Japanese Army, burning brightly on the draining board all crying “AIYYEEEE!” as they perished the death from fire in two young boys minds.

After that we’d play the Iwo Jima scene over and over again every week until one evening I took the can of Ronsonol into the kitchen too and by squirting it into the conflagration discovered that it made an excellent flame thrower, “AIYYEEEE” and “AIYYEEEE” again and again, such fun.

And all the while that we did this we never gave one thought to the fact that we were playing our games of burning death in front of the large kitchen window, and we did not stop to think that exactly opposite the large kitchen window was an identical large kitchen window that belonged to the identical bungalow next door where Janet the Spinster lived, Janet the Spinster sister of William Gaunt, famous actor of these parts, you know, never mind, thats a different story.

And on the fateful night the shores of Iwo Jima were burning brightly in our kitchen sink topped up by generous squirts from the Ronsonol can of death when Janet walked into her own kitchen to fill a kettle from her own sink and catching something unusual form the corner of her eye glanced upwards towards our kitchen window to see those two nice boys from next door stood at their kitchen sink staring back at her in horror from behind a wall of flame.

“What do we do now” hissed Ned to me from the corner of his mouth

“Wave and pretend nothings happening” I hissed back at him from the corner of my mouth

And so we waved at Janet from behind our wall of flame but she was dumbstruck, staring back at us, a moment frozen in time, her rigid at her kitchen sink with the kettle overflowing while Ned and I waved at her from behind our wall of flame.

She told our parents of course, and of course we denied it all and we would have got away with it if the bloody spout on the Ronsonol can of death hadn’t melted in the heat so our dad couldn’t use it the next time he had some watches to clean, and all this time he’d thought that the lighter fluid in the sweet tin had been evaporating over the weekend.

He had a small wood handled brush in his toolbox of watch repair stuff and we got six cracks on the knuckles each for our recreation of armageddon in the kitchen sink and they started to stay in the house on a Saturday night after that – it lasted two weeks before the lure of the club called again and this time we drew the blinds on the kitchen window before the war games started again.