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Since the very first “Fifth of November” in 1605, this has been the day for celebrating the unsuccessful Catholic scheme to assassinate James I and the Protestant aristocracy by exploding 36 barrels of gunpowder in the cellar beneath the Parliament building on the day that Parliament was to open. This is known as “The Gunpowder Plot, and this year is the 400th anniversary of this infamous early act of terrorism. The tradition of having a bonfire began the very same year as the aborted plot; Londoners who knew little more than that their King had been saved, lit bonfires in thanksgiving. Later the ritual became more elaborate; fireworks were added to the celebrations, and an effigy of Guy Fawkes came to grace the bonfires. While we knew the essentials of the story, we didn’t much care much about that as we built our bonfire and lit our fireworks! For many a kid in England in the 1950s, “Bonfire Night,” as we usually called it, was the best day of the year. It rivaled Christmas and one’s birthday because, although not associated with the joy of receiving gifts, it was a day of special thrills. The feeling was hard to duplicate or explain except insofar as that excitement can be captured in one now rather old-fashioned word from childhood: mischief! Unlike in America, we didn’t have Halloween when I was a kid. It didn’t even feature, though I think it has since crept into Britain, the commercial impulse being as strong as it is. Someone once asked me what Guy Fawkes’ Night was all about, and I said: “Imagine Halloween with explosives!” Guy Fawkes Day, as we sometimes called it too, had an additional significance to us because there were local connections. It was said that it was in the half-timbered Tudor gatehouse (known as “The Plot Room”) of the manor house of Ashby St. Ledgers, the home of Robert Catesby, a few miles northwest of my hometown of Northampton, where Catesby, Fawkes and the other conspirators had planned a good deal of the Gunpowder Plot, and whither they initially fled in the early hours of November 5, after the plot’s failure. Also, another conspirator, Francis Tresham, had lived in nearby Rushton Hall. We derived some satisfaction from the knowledge that some local boys had been rebels. November the Fifth sounds like a one-day affair, but for us that glorious day started in the middle of October, or even earlier, so, while Bonfire Night itself was frustratingly short, the build-up of anticipation in the preceding weeks was all part of the delicious fun of the season. We never celebrated Halloween, so this was the main event of our childhood autumns. The preparations for Bonfire Night entailed three things: getting money to buy fireworks, gathering combustibles for the bonfire, and making the “guy.” I got half a crown a week pocket money, which was usually adequate for my needs, but this was a special occasion, and, after pooling our modest wealth, my pals and I never had enough cash for all the explosives we required. Getting more meant taking part in the traditional ritual shakedown of the general public by asking for “A penny for the guy.” For this, we needed a guy. This was, we knew, an effigy of the infamous Guy Fawkes. We had some idea of what he’d tried to do, but we didn’t think any the worse of him for wanting to blow up the government; that seemed quite a reasonable idea, even to a 12-year-old. And how could we think badly of him anyway? Without Guy Fawkes there was no Guy Fawkes Day, and the poor fellow was to be the centerpiece of the bonfire, even though Fawkes had not actually been burned at the stake. Some people’s guys were ambitious and more realistic, but ours was pretty crude—an old shirt and a pair of trousers, and perhaps a coat, crammed with anything we could lay our hands on—hay, rags, dead leaves, newspaper. His cuffs were tied with string, and one of us usually had a woolly hat, some old gloves, a pair of nasty sneakers or, even better, some old leaky “wellies” (rubber boots). His head might be a stuffed paper bag or pillowcase with a face drawn on it, or perhaps made more lifelike with a mask bought at the shop, something with a goatee and a twirling moustache as befitted a 17th century gent. He didn’t have to look like Guy Fawkes, but often there was an attempt at resemblance. The more ambitious types might make a mask from papier-mâché, perhaps as a school project for the young. Once completed, we put the guy in an old pram or a cart and wheeled him around the streets, bouncing along uneven sidewalks alongside dusty privet hedges, perhaps chanting the first verse from that old rhyme: Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason, and plot, I see no reason why gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot. Any passer-by was accosted and asked: “Spare a penny for the guy, mister?” It might be a threepenny bit, sixpence, or even a shilling. We also knocked on neighbors’ doors, hoping that no other child beggars had come before us. A penny went a long way back then, and, as well as funding our ammo purchases, we might also have cadged enough from these generous strangers for some sweets or comics too. In those simpler days, any kid could just go into the corner shop and buy all the fireworks he could afford over the counter, though current laws have clamped down on this, and age restrictions have been imposed, as well as other legislation banning the various dangerous things you can do with fireworks, such as throwing them in the street. In other words, the killjoys have taken away all the fun! And all because every year someone got blinded or lost some fingers! Each firework had (probably legally required but) futile instructions printed on them, and we used to laugh at what it said: “Light the blue touch paper and retire immediately.” Much of how Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated today results from the rising number of accidents, especially to careless children, and many communities now hold well-regulated and professionally organized public bonfire events, or those put on by the local municipality, with fireworks set off, with boring caution, at a safe distance from the spectators. But even these have their risks; at one time my father was helping at such a display put on at a children’s orthopedic hospital near my house. The children were wrapped in blankets and their beds wheeled out of the wards for a better view. About half way through the display, a wayward sparking “Jumping Jack” landed in the box and set off the rest of the fireworks in what was quite a spectacular though short-lived display! Seeing rockets go off horizontally and scattering the onlookers was a treat for young eyes. But when I was a kid, we had no interest in fireworks as a “spectator sport.” We wanted a hands-on experience, and the first such experience was acquiring them. In the shops where we bought our fireworks, they were displayed in deep trays, forming a bright and jewel-like array that we could paw through, stirring up that sharp gunpowder smell, and pick out what we wanted. Those lucky enough to have amassed enough cash could create an interesting personal arsenal. The fireworks had all sorts of exotic names, hinting at the kind of display they would give: Catherine Wheel, Roman Candle, Helicopter, Flying Saucer, Emerald Cascade, Witches’ Cauldron, Silver Fountain, Snow Storm, Mount Etna, Mount Vesuvius, Golden Rain. You could also buy a box of assorted fireworks, but that was no good to us—what we were interested in were the “bangers” (firecrackers here, I guess). These were pure gunpowder, or something similar—anyhow, serious stuff, with no fancy sparkle or color effects. Your basic bomb! They always had macho and violent names: Mighty Atom, Thunderclap, Atom Bomb, Cannon, and Thunderflash. They came with dire warnings about not holding them in your hand. (Sure, we only held them long enough to light and throw them!) Bangers varied in size and price, and the smallest, a Little Imp, was a penny. The best were the biggest, of course, and cost 3d or 4d. They consisted of a compressed cardboard tube three or four inches long, and had a blue fuse at one end that burned for a few seconds before they went off. The fuse even burned under water, and sometimes we tied them to a stone and dropped them alight into a rain barrel, making our own “depth charges” that boomed dully and raised sulphurous bubbles. We had only the haziest concept of danger, and didn’t wait till November 5 before having fun with bangers, and they would be set off without warning any time, weeks before. The after-school evenings echoed to bangs and the running footsteps of scattering kids following some prank. A lit banger tossed on the ground behind a girl was guaranteed to get a scream. From the point of view of their vast mischief potential as an unguided missile, rockets were great too, though more expensive and less convenient, so we tended to stick with bangers. My own finest accomplishment was the invention of a simple but effective homemade “bazooka.” This weapon consisted of a 6-foot length of half-inch copper pipe snagged from a building site; I hammered one end flat and there was my bazooka! All I had to do was hold the pipe at an angle and drop a fizzing banger into it, ensuring that it went right down to the sealed end. This was followed quickly by a 6-inch flathead nail, and then, with the pipe over my shoulder, I pointed it at a tree or a garage door or a bird. It worked well, and was brilliantly inaccurate. (Is it any wonder that there was a push to ban the sale of incendiary devices to minors?) The bonfire started to grow days before. There were usually several bonfires in the area, and you had to be careful that no one “raided” yours and pinched something for theirs. It was a communal activity; everyone had an interest and we all hoarded material for it. Our fire was on a piece of waste ground at the bottom of a slope by the allotments, long since built on, but in those days simply an area of well-trodden grass that doubled as an impromptu sports field. There was nothing nearby that could catch fire, so the bonfire could be as big and tall as we could make it. The size was governed only by how much we could collect and how high we could throw it, but when it got really big we’d climb onto it to place objects at the summit. Anything that would burn was suitable—branches, logs, furniture of any kind, packing cases, cardboard boxes, old fences, and any old scrap of wood. Everyone had some encouragement to clean our their garage or shed. We would drag a dead tree for half a mile, and an old chair or length of timber left outside was likely to be grabbed as a contribution for the flames. Chairs and sofas were prized as they could be used to sit on to enjoy the bonfire before being thrown on the fire in due course. On Bonfire Night itself, we rushed home from school and gobbled our supper, eager to get outside. Our pockets stuffed with bangers and a box of matches, our breath foggy in the chill air, we roamed the darkened neighborhood like bandits, marauders on the loose, looking for trouble, alive with excitement, and tasting that incomparable mixture of freedom and danger. The sky would be full of rocket trails and flashes, and the air crackled with explosions far and near, like a city in the throes of civil war. I sometimes wonder now what our parents must have thought as we donned our scarves and set off that night, but in those days there seemed to be no overt anxiety or, to my recollection, even any futile warning to “be careful,” even as we set off to wander the dark streets for hours, intent on detonating explosives. Woe betide any neighbor who had been unkind to us earlier in the year—someone who was just famously grumpy, had shouted at us for some reason, had stolen our tennis ball, had a mean dog, or who had chased us out of their orchard as we scrumped their plums. Among the evil tricks played on such people was to Scotch-tape a banger to a pane of glass on their greenhouse, light it, and run like hell before the bang and the crack came. Another trick was to stuff a banger and a wadded up sheet of newspaper or a paper bag up someone’s drainpipe, and set light to the paper. The banger went off with a satisfying metallic boom that set the pipe ringing, and created a lot of smoke. Looking back, it was all rather like “trick or treat” but without the possibility of being bought off with candy as, if we were lucky, we escaped undetected. I found too that a banger pushed into a nice rotten pear or tomato was a particularly effective messy “hand grenade,” and lobbing a soft and overripe piece of fruit with a fizzing fuse into a group of pals was always good for a laugh. When we were low on ammunition it was time to get to the bonfire, which might have been already lit by the time we got there, after we’d finished alarming the neighborhood. If it were a wet day, a little paraffin on a rag would help things get started. If we had a guy (and we didn’t every year), earlier that day we’d have placed him as high as we could onto the pyre, usually by means of a borrowed ladder. There might be other people’s guys there too, so it was often the grisly spectacle of several guys catching fire, and we would cheer as these cadavers were consumed. We never did it, but I discovered in later years that in some places, people used to include an effigy of The Pope as well as Guy Fawkes on the bonfire. Well after all, Guy Fawkes was hoping to restore the Catholic Church in England, though the failed plot actually created a backlash against the Catholics that lasted for centuries. But this papal gesture is probably just a quirky tradition rather than an expression of hostility towards the Pope himself. Those with a satirical bent can always burn in effigy some contemporary politician. (Any suggestions?) Plenty of fireworks were being set off around the bonfire, and the air was thick with the tang of gunpowder smoke. There was always a good crowd within the bonfire’s circle of light, feeling its heat and hearing the roar of climbing flames, faces red from the fire, backsides freezing. Additional chunks of wood we’d found would be added to the flames, and we would get as close as we dared to hurl a branch to the top. Flames reached high, the exploding wood spat sparks, and the wind-whipped smoke choked us, making our clothes and hair stink for days afterwards as a reminder of our good time. If you had any bangers left it was always a good joke to drop one into the fire when someone was close by and laugh as they jumped when it went off loudly in a shower of embers. Eventually the fire died down somewhat, and settled, and those who had prepared for eating would toss foil-wrapped potatoes into the ashes to bake. These were fished out with a stick after a while, and, although usually black and still hard and largely unrecognizable as spuds, we wolfed them down hot from the fire, usually burning lips and fingers, but if the night were frosty we didn’t care. To the doubtless relief of parents, we eventually returned home, late and grubby, but invariably grinning at our secret adventures. The next day we had fun looking for the casings of spent fireworks and the sticks of fallen rockets; they lay around the bonfire’s warm ashes, and the surrounding now quiet streets looked scarred like a war zone. In later years, when the allure of childish mischief and pyromania had waned a little, we would give or attend Bonfire Night parties, for the day still had to be marked somehow. But there was no more intentional terrorizing of the neighbors, for by then we had become the neighbors! We’d matured to the extent that we sometimes deplored and swore at the crack and whiz of fireworks after midnight, keeping us awake late on a work night. Now for these latter-day Bonfire Nights, an abundance of beer and wine was required, along with a few tame and pretty fireworks, and Golden Rain now seemed quite attractive! The bonfire was much smaller, or perhaps not even permitted in the garden of a residential area. It would still double as an oven for our baked potatoes, chestnuts, and sausages—“bangers” of a different kind! Soup, hot chocolate, and a piece of parkin (ginger and treacle) cake were always welcome on a cold starry night. The bonfires of childhood always glow brighter, but they really were good times. Each year I still remember, remember the Fifth of November, in that misty way in which nostalgia now arrives. I still thank those traitors back in 1605, and like to imagine what sort of firework display those 36 barrels of gunpowder would have made! Peter Douglas mekon54@gmail.com --
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