Country Life
BY IAN NIALL
THE habit of celebrating November 5 and the tendency to anticipate the day, in my part of the world, by almost a month is one that may ultimately lead to explosions throughout the year, it seems to me. The bon- fires were built as early as October 8, and the detonations were a regular feature of the gathering dusk by October 12, If there is any virtue in this at all it may be that we have been toughened up. A small boy who had just let off an 'hydroatomic bomb' in the glen across the road told me that he had had to do so for it wasn't safe to keep one indoors. Pre- sumably the shopkeeper thought it 'unsafe to keep it under the counter. Research makes progress and the bangs arc definitely bigger and better than anything we have heard before. The flash that makes one jump out of one's shoes is a passable imitation of what one might imagine an atomic flash to be. The policeman who was standing at the corner when one of these atomic hangs shook what we call the lower village clucked his tongue and said, 'I'd catch them if I could, but when I get down there they've gone.' What can one expect? This is the age of the atom and jet propulsion and the policeman can only clump through the narrows and alleys of the village at his modest three miles an hour, and while he does so new- 'tests' are going on behind the school, down at the station or in that echoing stretch where the back road runs between high stone walls.
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