So this morning I woke up and thought ‘Ah, another day of podcast writing, checking I have ingredients for dinner and…’ Hang on. It’s November 5th! How did this become
just another day? The slow erosion of bonfire night, or fireworks night, or – more specifically – Guy Fawkes’ night, in the memory and public consciousness has entirely happened during my time on earth; actually more accurately the first fifty or so years of that span.
I can only write from personal experience – and I was a bit of an odd boy – but as a child this date was the second in the ‘holy trinity’ of autumn/winter excitement. First was 31st October – Halloween – and the third was of course 25th December. 5th November marked a sort of mid-point; a date I looked forward to for weeks.
While the deregulation of the fireworks industry in the early 1980s (thank you, Mrs Thatch) really opened the field of choice for the firework hunter, back in the 1960s there were five firework companies all offering pretty much the same thing: Brock’s, Pain's, Wessex, Astra and Standard. Fireworks were sold individually or in different sized, affordable mixed boxes. You could gaze at the goods via glass fronted wooden display cabinets in most toy shops (although my own local shop, Holloway’s in Hounslow, chose not to stock them).
My parents didn’t have much money at the time, so we would only have been able to afford a small box of fireworks, which was fine. Once bought – sometime in advance of bonfire night – it would be stored under the sofa in the ‘best room’ of the house (ie the front room, only used for guests/parties and closed off at all other times to avoid having to heat it, via the creaky back boiler behind the main fireplace).
I would sneak into the front room pretty much nightly in the days leading up to 5th November, open the box and smell the gunpowder which stuffed each of the fireworks; sometimes there was a powdery residue in the box, and I wondered what mischief I could cause with that. There was always a roman candle, a jumping jack, a catherine wheel (which, when nailed to a fence post, hardly ever seemed to rotate), and a rocket. Touching these talismans was arguably as much, if not more fun than setting them off; there was always something a bit sad about the brief life of a firework, as if the potential of the thing was never matched by its momentary kinetic release. Rockets were slightly different. Fired from a milk bottle, half submerged in earth for stability (the bottle always smelled pretty disgusting the morning after) each one rose skyward to join its friends, as if being alone was not a natural state.
And then there was the now extinct practice of ‘penny for the guy’. My mother came from the poorer side of a rather well to do family in north London and always felt more connected to them than her own mother. I realised, some years after her death, that mum had retained some of the snobbery from that side of the family too, which rubbed off on me; this was probably why I looked on the ‘penny for the guy’ merchants as a bit common. Certainly I never undertook, or was asked to undertake, the custom of wheeling a badly made ‘guy’ to a street corner and begging for money. But in the late 1960s such groups were common. When did this die out?
I learned the origins of Guy Fawkes quite early. I attended a Church of England primary school, and on one particular November 5th, when we were all excited and raring to leave school for our respective back gardens (this would have been sometime towards the end of the 1960s) our headmaster called a kind of impromptu end of school assembly, giving us a very Protestant skewed account of evil Guy Fawkes and his treasonous acts, seeking to instill in us the reason we were celebrating and, arguably, warning of the perceived dangers of popery; how
very 17th Century (although until relatively recently shops sold Guy Fawkes masks too, a tradition dating back - in different forms - to the early 1600s). At the time this account seemed to conflict with the often jolly figure of Mr Fawkes found on the front of the fireworks boxes. But even then it cast a slight pall of gloom over bonfire night. How many of the households in Hounslow, all setting off fireworks at the same time in their back gardens, associated what they were doing with the slice of history imparted to us? Who knows.
Obviously we still have fireworks now; their use is no longer restricted to one day of the year (Diwali celebrations and bonfire night are often very close to each other date wise, not to mention the now firmly enshrined New Year's spectacle), and fireworks outlets can be found on high streets all year round. What’s missing, I suppose, is Guy himself. One look at the Wiki page for the event reminds the reader that for nearly four hundred years after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot the 5th November was one of the most important, and significant, dates in the UK calendar (enshrined in law to ensure its continued observance), only to be largely snuffed out as the 20th century drew to a close. Even the famous Lewes and Sussex bonfires, which take place on or around November 5 annually, have moved the focus of their fiery celebrations from religious martyrs to prominent unpopular political figures.
As an adult, and owner of two vulnerable rescue cats, I confess to maintaining a slight dread at the cacophony experienced at this time of year; but only on their behalf. Inside, I’m still that child, excited, anticipating the first of the night’s showers of sparks. Now where’s my Guy Fawkes mask?
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