Remember, remember, the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot...




Although of course Gudio Fakes and his confederates were not actually on some mission to free the citizens from a dictatorship but rather to slaughter James VI (and I), first monarch of the United Kingdoms and his family and Parliament in an attempt to restore the primacy of the Catholic church. Ironic, given that the last Catholic monarch, Mary (who preceded Elizabeth I, who named James of Scotland as her heir), was rather given to burning Protestant 'heretics' alive and today, centuries on, we still burn effigies of Guido, a Catholic conspiracist. I suppose today he and his friends would be classed as a terrorist cell of fundamentalists prepared to martyr themselves for their faith, regardless of any innocents killed along their way to a promised place in heaven. Plus ca change...

When I was a kid I loved Guy Fawke's Night, although our family always had it either just before or after November 5th because we all came together for it and one of my uncles was a fireman and that is the one night of the year they can never have off, so we'd have to go out the garden of my papa's house, me, mum, dad, papa, gran, aunts, uncles, cousins older and younger, the folks from next door and their kids who I was friends with and all the dads present would have picked up boxes of fireworks which would then be pooled so we'd have one big bash, with catherine wheels spinnings and rockets wooshing out of milk bottles (much harder to do today with milk cartons) while we kids drew glowing, ephemeral sketches in the air with sparklers and were spoiled with yummy snacks and pop.

Today it is a pain in the arse; the days running up to and right after the 5th are punctuated by constant BADANG!s as eejits toss bangers around at all hours and wee neds throw them at buses and people thinking it funny, or, as in a hideous case last week here in a less salubrious part of Edinburgh, taping fireworks to a household pet (a cat - it was found by neighbours and is alive, although with nasty burns - if I found the scumbags who did it I'd tie their legs open and shove some fireworks up their arse). Always amuses me America has far stricter rules governing fireworks in public than we have, although they do rather spoil this drive for safety by then saying no fireworks, but sure, you can have your own armour piercing bazooka for hunting...

And tonight, the 5th itself, it is a constant barrage of explosions going off until you start flashing back to a previous life when you served on the Somme. Since I, like thousands of others in cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow, live in a sandstone tenement block the noise is far worse, with the tall, stone walls acting like canyons, sound amplified and reflected, setting off car and shop alarms while sirens are heard rushing past on the nearby road every five minutes - a great British tradition for sure. Luckily the cats are utterly non-plussed by the bangs; the ears twitch, they look up occasionally, but it obviously is not worth interrupting one of their naps for.