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The fifth day of November. Britain's most holy day. Up and down the country, thousands of treacherous English Catholics (mostly made of old newspaper) are burnt on great bonfires.
In the morning I was visiting an expensive tearoom on the south Devon coast. When asked whether I was local, I explained I was down here to see the "tar barrels". The tearoom lady said they might go too, but she was unsure whether the kids are old enough.
"If dad's going, I'm definitely going" piped up one of her kids. To which she turned to me and said "well, maybe we'll see you there."
She also gave me some advice: not to wear polyester or nylon. "Natural fabrics are probably best."
I arrived in the town of Ottery St Mary early in the afternoon, parked up, and got something to eat in a coffee shop with an "emergency evacuation route" sign above the door. Even at this early time, marshalls patrolled the town. A few shops were boarded up, I initially couldn't tell if this was prudence or whether they'd stopped trading. A gazebo for BBC Radio Devon sheltered their equipment from the sporadic rain. Sections of the road were already taken up by street side pubs getting ready to sell their beer.
More shops were boarded up by the time I'd finished in the coffee shop. There weren't many people about yet, but there still seemed to be a buzz in the air.
Traffic had all but thinned to nothing by the official road closure time of 3:30, and by then a long line of roadside stalls were setting up. Permanent shops were also setting up to provide the spectators with food.
I eventually found a shop selling merchandise and programmes. Inside was a useful map which led me to one of the first events.
At 4pm, several "cannon" shots rang out and a barrel, lined with tar and with petrol doused straw inside, was set ablaze. Then, after the inferno had set in, it was lifted aloft by an adolescent who ran with it, before passing it to another, who then ran back. It went thus, back and forth, carried by a plethora of teenagers along the short section of road.
Surrounding me were friends and family of the barrel bearers, they cheered on their own, whilst taking photos and videos. 35 minutes later, the barrel's integrity was insufficient to continue. This was very impressive. It had me grinning from ear to ear. Worth it in its entirety, but there was more to come.
A short walk away, another was beginning. I got there in time and took up position by an old phone box, its concrete base gave me a height advantage so I could see over most heads.
This time though, something was different. It looked like the barrels were being carried underarm or dragged... I wasn't sure, too many children on shoulders were in my way. I moved closer to discover that indeed the barrels were carried over heads, but this time the heads were young kids. 7-year-olds in some instances. Which also explained the quantity of other kids having the time of their life watching the event.
More cannon shots rang out, I saw them this time. They were shooting some kind of muzzle loading hand cannon.
I found myself in the town square 1½ hours in, when a much bigger barrel was set ablaze. This time the conflagration was carried around a group of spectators, hemming them in, umm, I mean hemming us in. After we were all contained, a barrel bearer ran straight at us, sending people screaming in terror. It felt like we were a shoal of fish being picked off by predators.
I genuinely thought the first barrel performance was unbeatable. But this beat it. It was phenomenal. Again I found myself involuntarily grinning.
I watched until it was nearly 6:30, when I went to the outskirts to see the lighting of the bonfire, placed unceremoniously at the very edge of the map. As I turned the corner out of the town centre, I realized this event was far bigger than I'd thought. Instead of this being the periphery, this was another epicentre of merriment. An impressive fun fair illuminated the park, its ground turned to thick slippy mud by the number of people who'd visited.
The fire was ablaze before I got there, but it didn't matter as the crowd was too deep for me to get near enough to see it with my own eyes. The screens of others' phones giving me the best image. (I was on a bridge, so the fire was beneath us.)
Then, choking smoke swamped us, still-burning embers fell upon us (nylon would've been bad). People pulled scarves over faces in an attempt to mitigate the smoke. Shortly after that, I realized it was suddenly very busy, too busy, uncomfortably busy. Suddenly, I wasn't quite so jolly. I retreated through the thick crowds back to the centre of town, but I did manage to glimpse the fire which was truly colossal - easily the equal of the Sussex bonfires - or it would be once all the wood caught, but I didn't wait for that.
I bounced around from barrel to barrel, but the crowds were now large here too. I wasn't enjoying it as much and retreated to the car for a sit down. I considered leaving, but I'd been told that the midnight barrel (the last of the day) was huge and not to be missed. So I emerged and wandered around once more, seeing a few more displays and noticing a contradiction in the event.
With so many people, it should seem like most are strangers to the town. Yet there was a very high proportion of people bumping into old friends and recognizing locals who were hanging out of upper storey windows. It was a heaving festival, yet a very local one too.
Back in the main square, there were no barrels but music was blaring out. The whole town square had become an open-air discotheque. Even though, I stayed there for the rest of the night.
I saw the last two barrels in the square, including the midnight one. Both were huge. For the first, I was right amongst the chaos again, dodging it and feeling the heat of the flames and smelling the foul smoke. But for the midnight barrel, I kept myself to the side mostly, and the moment it crashed to the ground and not picked up again, the night was over and I made a beeline for my car before it became trapped by crowds going home.
What an event! It was absolutely epic.