Please to remember, the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

Today is that day in Britland where they celebrate non-success! Guido Fawkes' failed attempt to blow up the King of England and his parliament! They do this by systematically sending huge amounts of cash up in smoke, literally. Oh alright, they have firework displays but they amount to the same thing.

Now it has always struck this penguin as odd that the celebration should have continued for so long. It actually started at the time of the original plot, although in a different form, as a thanksgiving for the deliverance of the King, James Thefirstof-England (formerly King James Thesixthof-Scotland who changed his name when he took the job for reasons which have now become obscured in the mists of time. He is best known for his bible:) from an untimely demise. Now the plot at the time was firmly laid at the feet of English Catholics and so it seems reasonable that the largely protestant English should take great pleasure in rubbing the Pope's nose in it; they had after all only just seen off a catholic inspired invasion not fifty years before - the Great Spanish Armadillo. Actually the Armada was less seen off by the Brits than by the Great British weather but we'll leave them their illusions of Great Queen Bess and Sir Francis Drake playing bowls at Plymouth Ho!

Now the Brits have been reasonably tolerant of religions over the last 400 years or so; even James himself didn't, as might have been considered reasonable for an absolute monarch at the time, go in for a great deal of Catholic bashing, just the odd one here and there, and they are more tolerant now of other faiths, or lack of them, than they have ever been. The enduring nature of the celebration cannot then be a continuing desire to blow raspberries at the Pope nor, I think, can it be in celebration at the saving of a long dead monarch, who is after all just that, dead! Most people if quizzed would, I think, tend to say that Fawkes was trying to blow up Parliament by which they would mean the democratically elected 'House of Commons'. In fact Fawkes was trying to blow up the house next door, the House of Lords, the 'Commons' did not even exist then. So why?

I think it has to do with the very thing young Guido was using to achieve his aim of separating the King from his entourage, gunpowder. The Brits have never been ones for celebrating much and until recently, fireworks were usually only ever seen today; there wasn't much of a 'fireworks' tradition (except among the immigrant Chinese community) and so in thrall to all that aerial splendour, the Brits clung aggressively to this one opportunity every year when they could 'light the blue touchpaper and stand well back'.

There used to be tradition which, perhaps sadly, is rapidly dying out where a 'guy' (effigy) made of some old men's clothes stuffed with newspaper, to provide form, would be wheeled out into the High Street by children in the weeks before today and used to solicit, oh alright, beg, for money for fireworks; 'penny for the guy, mister?' The poor have always been canny when it comes to raising money for a bit of fun. These would be added to whatever the parents had provided and each little garden in the street would have its own little display while the children stood around with 'sparklers' in their hands breathing 'Oooooh!' into the night air along with huge plumes of mist.

Another tradtion, perhaps also dying out but more slowly, was the community bonfire. In addition to begging for money, the children would trawl their neighbourhood looking for anything which might burn; knocking on doors, asking for old or broken furniture (it used to be saved especially for this by generous householders) and generally ransacking the area to build the largest 'bonfire' they could on a patch of waste ground, of which there was a lot in the years after the war in major cities. Small exercises in space creation made by Hitler on the way home. A 'guy' would be placed on top, the pile liberally doused with petrol and the whole thing ignited to the consternation of the adjoining householders and the local fire brigade. The whole street would gather round and eat half baked potatoes and over baked sausages cooked in the fire, while the guy burned. Ah the old 'Blitz' mentality. Have a cup of tea and a chat while everything goes up in smoke around you :) Sometimes the houses burned as well but that was not an annual occurance just the occasional bonus when the fire brigade were stuck in traffic :)

Now it's just Council/Government organised displays of the most staggering ingenuity. Safer, no children suffering 3rd degree burns, more thrilling to watch, phantasmagoria in the sky but........................no sparklers!