My great nephew as a teenager ran afoul of an old-school BBS archive website. He was certain it would be good fun to make a few incendiaries, Despite my attempts to dissuade him, he began to hide his enthusiasm, which had me worried he'd do it on his own. I figured it'd be wiser (and safer) to have someone with a bit of chemistry knowledge around when he tried doing dumb things.

We started small. I purchased some dry ice. Thermite was too boring. Elephant toothpaste was cool at first. Some petrol with polystyrene mixed in. Aluminium and acid cleaner. Then onto fertiliser tennis balls.

We eventually worked our way up to the Taj Mahal... Cyclonite. Hexogen. RDX. Unstable as the devil and more volatile than nitrated toluene, or TNT. The chemistry was very simple, but ridiculously foolish. I consider it advanced only due to the difficulty in ensuring we didn't get to visit a hospital or get a visit from the bobbies.

Never again. It took several days because I multiplied the recipe, like a dunce. We should've just made TNT, it would've been safer, but he persisted and I indulged.

The night before the big day. At this point, we'd been faffing around a dangerous line for almost ten months, whenever he managed to wrangle some free time for more mischief. I'd managed to extract a promise, this was to be the last of it until after his national service. He agreed. Keeping it in the boot of the car had me especially anxious,and until we saw the detonation, I felt like a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The detonations in a desolate field were gratifyingly lovely though. He got the final trigger on an over sized charge, and his grin was worth the heartache.

He's a pharmacist now.