Guy Fawkes' Night

I interrupt the Italy reminisces because it’s time for another festival – this time it’s Guy Fawkes’ Night or Bonfire Night if you prefer.

I remember these as kids with the fireworks, toffee apples, bonfires and treacle toffee that went with it. I remember being bundled up in coats and hats, scarves and mittens, holding jacket potatoes and waving sparklers. We ooh-ed and ah-ed at the fireworks as only those bright explosion things in the sky can make you.

There used to be public announcements warning people to check their bonfires for hedgehogs as they were wont to climb in among the wood and leaves and make a cosy burrow, which got a bit too cosy when the flames started, and we ensured that all our pets were safely locked indoors.

For weeks before the event, there were collections for firewood and a penny for the guy – dad’s ‘old’ clothes were ransacked, usually with mum’s tacit consent. Him Outdoors tells me there used to be skirmishes round his way when raiding parties went out at night to nick each others wood. But then, he did live ‘up north’ where it’s grim, apparently.

Bonfire Night is celebrated in New Zealand too, although there are a myriad of heath and safety legislations about what to do with your Golden Rain (is it just me, or does that sound rude?) and where you can stick your Roman candles. It kind of surprises me that the festival is held here at all because it seems particularly British.

It was instigated to celebrate the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of the 5th of November 1605 in which a number of Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate King James I. It was compulsory, by Royal Decree, to celebrate the deliverance of the King in the UK until 1859. I have heard people lament the failure of the plot and in fact, celebrate Guy Fawkes as something of an anti-hero.

The conspirators behind the Gunpowder Plot intended to indiscriminately kill everyone in the vicinity of Parliament which, being in the centre of London, would have been quite a lot of people. Since many of the neighbouring buildings were made of wood, they would have caught fire and much of the city would have been destroyed (as it actually was 60 years later, but by accident). This makes him a terrorist in my book, but then I’ve always been interested to see how one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

And then there’s the weather. Guy Fawkes’ Night is just that – it takes place at night when the skies are dark so you can see the fireworks and the flames. You have to wrap up warm and roasting chestnuts is not just a pleasant pastime; it’s a necessity. Here you have to wait until it’s dark, by which time the kids have been kept up for several hours past their bedtime, so are even more whiny and petulant than usual. Plus they’re generally high on sugar.

And we haven’t even mentioned the wind. The fireworks displays in Wellington all have disclaimers that they will be ‘weather permitting’, which means the winds can’t be too strong. Ha! Expect to see that fireworks display sometime next February when the gale force winds subside for an hour or two. But don’t hold your breath.