It wasn’t long after fire crackers were banned in New Zealand. Some readers may recall those big bangers that were the size of your thumb and frightened the living beejasis out of the neighbours’ cats.
We had arrived in Saint Malo, France after completing a yacht race that had taken us around the English Channel for a day or so. St Malo is a stunning old French medieval city, located in a part of the world where 40ft tides are common, so you lock into the dock area for the night and leave again the next day on the high tide. We tied up next to our rival yacht, which we called Trilodog, a 45 footer crewed by a real bunch of Hoorah Henries.
As we tied up one stuck his snooty nose out through the hatch and said “Oh we don’t want you next door, there could be trouble….” We treated that with the contempt it deserved and continued to raft up alongside…. but we stored it away for later revenge.
We set about exploring St Malo. It’s one of the most stunning places I’ve ever been. We enjoyed the cafes and had a few beers on the town, which was in full-on party mode with street theatre bands and entertainment of all kinds.
And there it was – a shop that sold nothing but big juicy firecrackers. Not your girly pretty ones, oh no, these were cat scarers of the mightiest variety. I walk in and pulled out a pile about three feet high.
“I’ll take these,” I said.
“”Zees are for ze Bastille day next veek … you vill not use zem until then?” asked the shopkeeper. Actually he asked in French but my spoken French is about as good as my written French, if you get my drift.
“Oh no said I. I’d never do a thing like that,” summonsing an angelic look.
In a night of utter mayhem, a few highlights stood out. The boys from Ceramco NZ were in town (it was a couple of weeks before they were due to set out on the 1980 Whitbread Round the World Race).
Throwing crackers at a pair of Ceramco crew who were pretending to busk with air guitars – then having them fall bodily on the fireworks before they went off. They smothered most of them, but not all, and their nice red crew shirts were pretty second hand by the end of the evening.
I met Peter Blake for the first time. One of the other crewmen took a ginormous cracker off me and used it to blow up one of Blakie’s boat shoes. He laughed and took it well, knew how to sweat the serious stuff and let the unimportant slide I suspect.
A particularly obnoxious pommy journo called Alec Bielby was chatting up a very tasty blonde, who was way too young and good looking for him anyway. We had to save her! We sneaked up behind him and placed a lit firework between his feet. When it went off he jumped a foot in the air, his face an inch from hers as he screamed “f*** at the top of his voice.” The blonde’s eyes narrowed in disgust as she looked at Bielby like something the cat had brought in. Mission accomplished.
We put a cracker under a wheelie bin and it blew the thing about 5ft in the air. These were serious crackers, these babies.
One of the crew got arrested for stealing potted palms, but they had to let him go for lack of evidence. Let’s just say the boat owner was pretty annoyed the next morning when he found the palm stuffed in his bunk along with 3 inches of dirt.
We staggered back to the boat at some ungodly hour.
And as we crossed Trilodog to get to ours, we dropped a string of double happy crackers down the forehatch. Lit ones.
That’s what’s known in the trade as a self fulfilling prophecy…..
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