Previously in A Huge Italian Bonfire: Geoff and Serena are waiting on the bridge for the Falò di San Nicolò to be lit when …

… all’improvviso, succede una cosa completamente inaspettata …
suddenly, something completely unexpected happens …

… out of the blackness behind the crowd looms a mysterious tubular object illuminated by a row of rectangular lights. It wails, screeches and hisses like some prehistoric beast, comes to a halt and hovers mysteriously above the river. Silhouettes of strange beings appear at the port holes, arms raised as if in greeting. The machine-beast wails and snorts.

Geoff: che diavolo!?!
Geoff: what the hell!?!

The 7.10 p.m. train from Parma to Pontremoli makes an unexpected stop in the middle of the railway bridge just behind us. The bewildered passengers stand and gawk from the windows whilst the driver, obviously Pontremolese, frantically blows the horn and whistle to encourage the San Nicolò team in their pyrotechnic endeavours.

Geoff (tirando un sospiro di disperazione): e sì … siamo in Italia … può succedere di tutto!
Geoff (sighing in despair): yep … we’re in Italy … anything can happen!

Serena: guarda, stanno accendendo le torce
Serena: look, they’re lighting the torches

One by one the pyromaniacs light their long wooden torches from a small fire. They move forward and form a circle around the base of the falò, there are at least thirty of them, the falò is enormous.
“lò lò lò, evviva San Nicolò, evviva il Vaticano, abbasso San Geminiano” they chant. “A few years ago there would probably have been a witch on top of that lot” thinks Geoff … “or perhaps a cynical Englishman!”

Geoff: ecco, lo stanno per accendere …
Geoff: here we go, they’re about to light it …

Whoosh, the flames leap up and tear through the outer layer of the 15 meter high pyre. The fuochisti (fire lighters) run for their lives and several hundred spectators whoop for joy, their jaws remaining slack at the fabulous spectacle.

Serena: non c’è un alito di vento, le fiamme salgono altissime e compatte, è bellissimo!
Serena: there’s not a breath of wind, the flames are going up tall and straight, it’s really beautiful!

Geoff observes the crowd. The children seem to loose interest before the adults, many of the young ones are now playing together or trying to remember the words of that cool San Nicolò chant. The adults, though, have a strange light in their eyes that is more than just the reflection of the fire. They have been transported beyond the mundane by the devilish flames which now leap and dance twenty meters above us. They are no longer responsible adults with bills to pay, they are children wandering through a fairy tale world where anything is possible … even the 7.10 train from Parma keeping its unsuspecting passengers hostage in the middle of the bridge … because the driver is a member of the San Nicolò gang!