Bonfire night explained...ish
'Bonfire night' is another term for 'Guy Fawkes night' or simply 5'th November'. It's a celebration of the failure of Guy Fawkes to blow up the Houses of Parliament using gunpowder. Wikipedia has more, of course. Traditionally, children would make a 'guy' a few days before 5th November (the sort of thing you can buy at any middle eastern effigy shop) and exhibit him in the street asking for ‘penny for the guy’. The money would be used to buy fireworks and, on 5th November night, the fireworks would be let off and the guy would go on the bonfire.
Today, the Indian festival of light, divali, means that the asian community let off fireworks at the start of November and the bangs and flashes continue for the whole first week.
Also, every British kid knows a kid who knows a kid who went to sleep in the bonfire he and his gang had made on a patch of waste ground to guard it against premature lighting by rival gangs and, like, died, yea, because a rival gang lit it with him inside and he was trapped. No, rilly.
Such occurrences are rare these days, as gangs of kids building bonfires have been a)banned under EU law and b) kids are too busy on their Xbox to bother while c) their enthusiastic nostalgic dads can’t find any waste ground because it’s all been built on.
I was over at the House about this time last year and to my dismay saw that they had rebranded bonfire night as ‘5/11 – the plot to blow up parliament’. (The English use day/month notation rather than month/date). What tosh. It’s 5th November, as in ‘remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot…I see no reason why the 5th of November should ever be forgot.’
After last year’s firework extravaganza that left scorch marks on my lawn, I’ve scaled back on the pyrotechnics. No display fireworks, just normal ones. The trick is to rope them together you see. Under a bag of fertilizer. Warning: this means nasty chemical fertilizer. Using manure just results in the BBC weather forecast talking about ‘short, sharp showers of shit over the South East’ and having to put the window cleaner on double shifts.
Today, the Indian festival of light, divali, means that the asian community let off fireworks at the start of November and the bangs and flashes continue for the whole first week.
Also, every British kid knows a kid who knows a kid who went to sleep in the bonfire he and his gang had made on a patch of waste ground to guard it against premature lighting by rival gangs and, like, died, yea, because a rival gang lit it with him inside and he was trapped. No, rilly.
Such occurrences are rare these days, as gangs of kids building bonfires have been a)banned under EU law and b) kids are too busy on their Xbox to bother while c) their enthusiastic nostalgic dads can’t find any waste ground because it’s all been built on.
I was over at the House about this time last year and to my dismay saw that they had rebranded bonfire night as ‘5/11 – the plot to blow up parliament’. (The English use day/month notation rather than month/date). What tosh. It’s 5th November, as in ‘remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot…I see no reason why the 5th of November should ever be forgot.’
After last year’s firework extravaganza that left scorch marks on my lawn, I’ve scaled back on the pyrotechnics. No display fireworks, just normal ones. The trick is to rope them together you see. Under a bag of fertilizer. Warning: this means nasty chemical fertilizer. Using manure just results in the BBC weather forecast talking about ‘short, sharp showers of shit over the South East’ and having to put the window cleaner on double shifts.
Labels: Bonfire night, fireworks, Guy Fawkes
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home