Fireworks!

There's something about fireworks that takes me right back to being a young boy growing up in east London just after the war. My dad used to take my brother and me up to Gamages in High Holborn to buy fireworks, which were subsequently let off in the back garden. The sound, sight and smell has stayed with me for sixty years, as has the taste of ash-covered, buttery potatoes hot out of the bonfire!

Tonight Linda and I drove out to Strumpshaw to watch some of the local displays from Barn Hill. I noticed that Mars (a spectacularly bright object at the moment) was close to Nashira, the  2.8 magnitude leading star of 'my' constellation of Capricorn: using the 300mm lens and converter, I reckon some Martian features are visible...