It is Guy Fawkes Night.
Bonfire night eluded me by twelve days when I came to live in London in ‘97. It took me a whole calendar year to catch up with the costume of celebrating (or mourning, take your pick) the failed Gunpowder Plot concocted by Guy Fawkes and his Catholic compadres in 1605. The story goes that Guy was arrested on the night of 5th November of the same year, whilst looking after the explosives that his fellow collaborators had put beneath the House of Lords. King James I survived the attempt on his life and from then on bonfires have been lit in London as an act of thanksgiving for the plot’s failure.
In previous years it was normal to see fireworks displays much earlier. In fact, there was almost a seamless segue from Halloween to Guy Fawkes Night. The rich, golden colours of pumpkins are a perfect prologue to the blue and yellowish arcs exploding in the dark sky. This is followed the morning after by the customary foggy weather to dull our senses and make my cycling experience that little more perilous.
This year it has been different. Tonight there is only a twenty- or twenty-five minute spell during which the autumnal night resembles a summer carnival... in Rio de Janeiro, but minus the floats. Have we called time on marshmallow on sticks and potatoes wrapped in foil? Only time will tell. In the meantime, I go back to the kitchen window hoping to catch the last sight of an errant firework before I go to bed.
© 2013
Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 10th November at 10am (GMT)
