Snowleopard wrote:

Crumbs. Now you are taking me back in time. T'was soon in the year that my
mother started making Parkin for the Guy Fawkes fe(a)stivities. I loved the
stuff.

We used to have a local community bonfire to which all families brought
something in the way of food, parkin being one of them. Potatoes baked in
the fire or an adjacent minor furnace, chestnuts and bangers of the
comestible variety.

Having a wholesale and retail greengrocery as part of the business, we
provided chestnuts and potatoes as well as the "manufactured" timber for the
fire.

As kids, we would forage for broken boughs and combustible garden wastes as
the main structure of the fire and then I with my father or uncle would load
up the Ford van ( which more often than not would need cranking rather than
fire from the electric starter) with what were waste boxes. Back in the
fifties, fruit imported into the UK would be in timber rather than cardboard
boxes.At the bonfire site there would be many young helpers to offload the
van.

Other parents, depending upon their line of business would provide other
materials: much regarded were the parents that ran corner shops that had
fireworks at this time of year!

Makes me think of Mary Hopkins - those were the days!