Fireworks

We're driving along, out in the Texas countryside heading towards Castroville. The sky is absolutely dark, spattered with stars, and as usual I find myself looking for the one which is following us. This is because the Target Books edition of Larry Kettelkamp's Investigating UFOs had a massive impact on me when I was a kid, seven or eight-years old and living on a farm in rural England. Being a kid I was fascinated by anything weird. I'd heard of flying saucers, but Kettelkamp's book was where I first read about their notional occupants, specifically in relation to the notorious case of Betty and Barney Hill. Oddly, the detail of the story which has stayed with me is that of Betty idly gazing from the window of their vehicle as they drove along and noticing how a star appeared to be following them.

So that's what I always think about under such circumstances, and possibly because it's very rare that I'm ever inside a car driving upon a country road after dark. The reason for this is that I've lived in cities since I was roughly twenty, which is fine because I don't like the countryside once the sun has gone down. It reminds me of being a kid, and of all the things I thought were real when I was a kid; and whilst I no longer believe those things to be real, I state this with greater confidence when the sun is shining, or at least when illuminated by the lights of town and city.

We're heading for Castroville because it's New Year's Eve, the last evening of 2018, and we've been invited to celebrate with Margot, one of my wife's co-workers whom I've yet to meet.

There will be fireworks. We were going to bring some to add to the pyrotechnics, but all of the places selling fireworks along our route - because no-one in Texas is allowed to sell fireworks within city limits - are tonight crammed with customers, truck after truck backed up onto the highway.

We drive for forty or fifty minutes, maybe an hour, following smaller and smaller roads until we're on a dirt track. I'm looking for names and numbers upon the mailboxes we occasionally pass because Bess is concentrating on driving.

'What was the name on that one?' she asks.

'It wasn't a name. It was some pro-life thing.'

'Well, that won't be Margot's place but we must be near.'

We're there within a few more minutes. There are lights up ahead, and as we approach I see a house and a barn - nothing else because it's darkness all around. It's now about eight in the evening.

We see people and we park.

Out of the car, I look up and realise I've probably never seen so many stars in my life. The sky looked nothing like this when I was growing up in England.

The people we see are Margot and other members of her family. They're stood around a bonfire. It's cold so we crowd in, watching cinders sail up into the black sky, warming ourselves by an orange glow from within the logs.

My first bonfires were Guy Fawkes night on the farm where I grew up. Being the only two kids on the farm, myself and Alan would get started on the bonfire about half way through October, dragging dead conifers from the spinney at the back of the cottages to a corner of the orchard at the foot of the hill, then stacking them against each other like the bones of a wigwam. I recall the conifers as having been some twenty or thirty feet high, but then I was myself much smaller so they probably weren't much taller than a clothes pole. Guy Fawkes night came and we all gathered around to light fireworks from little cardboard boxes and bake potatoes wrapped in tinfoil in the embers at the foot of the bonfire; and naturally this is what I'm thinking about right now as we stand around in the dark at Margot's place.

I've bought a few cans of Boddingtons so I get started on one. Bess introduces me to Steve and Lupe, both of whom work with her and Margot. Junior runs off to see the critters - cattle, horses and a donkey, amongst other things.

Lupe is not only from Mexico, but once lived in Toluca, a city I've visited many times. She only recently became a US citizen, so we get to talking about her citizenship seeing as it's something I've been considering. The process sounds complicated, with laboriously completed applications prone to disappear for no obvious reason, and without any apparent consequences for the government department that lost them. Maybe this is an example of America having become great again.

I tell her I had a similar, albeit less politically suspicious experience when applying for the visa which allowed me to travel to the United States and get married. It took me many months to fill in the application owing to the level of detail required. Eventually it was done and I sent it to the US Embassy in London from which I subsequently received an interview date. The interview began with an officious woman telling me that I had failed to fill in an application form and would therefore have to do it all over again.

'I actually did fill in an application form,' I said, 'and I posted it to you, so you must have received it.'

'We never received it, so you clearly didn't post it.' She told me this as a fact established by her having stated it.

'Had I not posted it,' I pointed out, 'you wouldn't have received it, and logically you must have received it because otherwise you wouldn't have sent me the letter asking me to come here for an interview.'

Despite the impeccable logic of my defence, I was nevertheless somehow in the wrong and had to fill in the same application form again, right there at the embassy, based on what I could remember of the month it had taken me to fill it all in first time around. This meant I had to take vague guesses at otherwise long forgotten details of employment history and the like.

Lupe sighs at the inevitability of the forces of officialdom which take the piss with a big smile because they know there's nothing you can do, regardless of your having gone through the supposed proper channels. We talk about the government for a little while. We're not very impressed with them.

We meet Kyle, who is already a little drunk. I have an impression of his being in his late twenties, but he tells us that his son is twenty-three. He describes himself as a skater. He and my wife know a few of the same people from high school, but not each other.

'Where you come from?' he asks me as others crowd around to savour the answer.

'England,' I tell them, prompting in response the usual anecdotes about either visits to England or having met some English dude at some point or other.

'No, I don't mind being asked,' I say in response to another question. 'I was asked the same question only today in HEB as it happens, same place I've been shopping since 2011. I guess the cashier never noticed my accent before today.'

This gets a laugh for some reason.

'I'm just going to start telling people I'm from San Antonio,' I add, which gets another, bigger laugh.

Trays of sausage, brisket and tortillas appear, freshly cooked and steaming. We fill our plates as Margot heads off towards a speaker sat in the grass connected to someone's smartphone and blasting out rock music, Smashing Pumpkins and a few things I actually recognise. 'I got me some ELO,' she announces ominously.

Kyle is engaged in an impersonation of what a Japanese gentleman says upon encountering a transgendered individual, a ladyboy by Kyle's terminology. He squints and grimaces causing his upper front teeth to protrude. His hand reaches down to tickle an imaginary penis as he delivers the punchline, four or five syllables which all seem to rhyme, one of them being dong with the hilarity pivoted upon long mispronounced as wrong - because it's an oriental person saying it. The joke, whatever it may be, is rendered incomprehensible by Kyle's delivery. It's difficult to tell where this one came from. Nothing within the conversation up to that point seemed to be heading towards either the Japanese, gender identity issues, or the phonetic disparity between certain languages.

Welcome to 1973, I think to myself, wandering back over to the bonfire as we get started on the fireworks. Margot's husband does the honours, taking fireworks across to the designated patch of ground and setting them off. The rockets are stood upright in the well of a couple of cinder blocks, one on top of the other. The fireworks look military grade, and when they go off, it's the sort of thing I'm used to seeing at huge public firework displays on Blackheath in London. We've come a long way since I was a kid with that dinky little cereal box of Roman candles and Catherine wheels.

Ooh, we all say, then ahh as we watch the sky light up with pops, bangs, and vastly spreading flowers of briefly electric colour.

Kyle jumps through a fountain of cinders flaming up from some giant landlocked sparkler. 'Yeehaw,' he accordingly whoops.

We watch, and then we go into the house to meet Margot's dogs, and other members of her family.

Her mother extends a hand in greeting and launches into a bewildering monologue cribbed from either Dick Van Dyke or one of those bloody awful Austin Powers movies. With hindsight, I'd say it was something along the lines of cups of tea with the jolly old Queen and blinky blonky blimey what weather we are having, but I'm unable to take in any of the specific details and receive only a general impression of cartoon cultural stereotypes. I'm on my third tin of Boddingtons and am approaching refreshed, plus it's difficult to believe that this woman is actually saying this crap in an apparent hope that I will respond, that I will recognise myself somewhere in there amongst the litany of Britface cliches.

I walk away because I don't know how to respond, and maybe because I feel sorry for the woman.

Bess and I pet the dogs, four or five of them including a collie, and also a cat.

'Good choice,' I say, giving Margot the thumbs up as I spot a Devo title amongst the DVDs just behind where the cat is lounging.

'That belongs to my husband,' she smiles. 'He's crazy about them. Myself, I like Cheap Trick…'

Margot's husband has been a peripheral figure at the edge of our gathering. Apparently he isn't much of a people person. I haven't even spoken to him but I already like him more than at least two of those assembled here today.

Everyone is inside, so I go back out, walking across to the still blazing bonfire and into the field beyond. The darkness is such that I can't see my own feet, so I'm treading carefully. I come to a halt as I approach what might be a fence, although it's hard to tell, and I look directly up.

I've honestly never seen so many stars. It's as though someone has taken a spray can to the sky. It's a little cold and absolutely quiet but for the distant buzz of the speaker relaying the hits of Green Day to an audience of no-one. The reason I could never go back to life in the country is that this kind of spectacle is simply too intense, and will never become anything familiar. I prefer illuminated spaces in which everything will occur within certain established parameters.

Out here, I'm right at the edge where lines blur, where stories such as the one related by Betty and Barney Hill don't seem quite so unreasonable. It's too much to take in, although it's beautiful beyond description.

I return to the house, happy to know that we'll be leaving in a few minutes. It's nowhere near midnight, but neither Bess nor myself are particularly bothered about the countdown, the ceremony, or the arbitrary division of one point in time from the next.

It's already 2019 in England.