Once upon a time, kids could do really stupid things

I was standing with eyes down, hanging onto a steel beam which Bill the builder was welding; making sure to avoid looking at the glare from the arc welder. A big drop of welding rod fell to the ground in front of me and spattered a bright shower of sparks upwards in a blossom of reddy-gold.

It reminded me instantly of fireworks. Not of the exotic stage managed extravaganza of NYE (as we are apparently now supposed to call it) but of the chook pen in our old family home, and a little "flower pot" that dad was lighting beside the bonfire on Empire Day.

Yep, when we still had vestiges of the pink bits on the globe, and grown-ups did a mild bit of forelock tugging, and kids sang "Hurrah for the red, white and blue" while we waved dolly pegs with appropriately coloured crepe paper strips wrapped around them held by rubber bands. When we stood up and bawled out "God save our gracious Queen."

And fireworks and big blazing bonfires that dads would spend weeks building before the 24^th of May each year.

The Empire Day flashback didn't last long though, just like the day itself as imperial glory finally faded. It pointed me to the real fun about fireworks – Empire Day's successor, Cracker Night (nominally the Queen's Birthday in June), which became symbolic for me of all the stupid things boys like us could possibly manage to do with fireworks.

It's the baby-boomer blokes' lament, tinged with guilty recognition: our grandchildren will never be allowed to have the fun and the mayhem of doing dangerous childhood things.

Like these:

• Putting penny bungers (shaped like baby sticks of dynamite) under jam tins and seeing how high the bunger could blow the jam tin into the air
  
• Then when that excitement paled, upping the stakes to put tuppeny bungers (even more wickedly powerful explosives) under kerosene tins for even more chaotic results
  
• Realising that penny bungers fitted quite neatly down a bit of water pipe, which you could bend in dad's vice into yes, the shape of a gun; then lighting the bunger, dropping it down the pipe, following it with a marble, and knowing you have created a potentially lethal weapon
  
• Using roman candles like semi-automatic rifles in firefights running around the chook pen battleground
  
• Going progressively up the scale to see how big an explosive you could hold in your fingers while it went off: the little tom thumbs no worries; the standard sized cracker, yep, okay; the penny bunger? No, we didn't get quite that stupid, or maybe my best mate and worst influence Greg Murphy may have once.
  

1966, where are you? Oh for long backyards, far enough from the house where mothers couldn't see the potential carnage going on. I know, I know, kids lost fingers, even eyes; the good burghers of Sans Souci lost letter boxes and the odd cat lost its life, when the really mean kids took up the bunger thing.

Now instead, it's like this:

• Fireworks are inevitably banned from personal use, except for some lame ones you buy in Fyshwick and smuggle across the border.
  
• It costs me $100, and a day's worth of lectures and tests on OH&S, before I can even think of being an owner-builder.
  
• One metre high step ladders are banned from building sites because you can't have 3 points of contact while standing on them.
  
• No council could ever again put in their parks one of those well-balanced and well-oiled twirly merry-go-rounds that you could get spinning really fast and then hang out and feel the centrifugal force and be spun off, and only lose a little bit of skin from knees and elbows.
  

I blame the lawyers. My former colleagues were very successful in eliminating bad luck, misadventure and just plain shit-happens from our lives, and turning it instead into someone's fault.

With that someone, of course, and their public liability insurers, having in the interests of truth and justice to be well and truly sued. And the nanny-state stepping in to protect us accordingly in line with the precedents set.

But I'm glad, I think, at least deep down, that my grandchildren will never be able to make bunger guns.