Remember, remember, the fourth of July

In 1605, on the fifth day of November, a group of malcontents led by one Robert Catesby, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London.  They managed to store several large barrels of gunpowder in the cellars beneath the House of  Lords, and they planned to blow them up on a day when King James I would be addressing members of both Houses there.  The plot, however, was betrayed and the conspirators were rounded up. One of them was actually captured in the cellar where he was preparing to light the fuse and retire immediately (There is a very lifelike representation of that occasion in Madame Tussaud’s waxwork museum in London).   He was Guido, or Guy, Fawkes and he is the best remembered of the conspirators.

Since then, the fifth of November has been the day, or rather night, when that deliverance has been commemorated.  It is known variously as Bonfire Night, Fireworks Night or, usually, Guy Fawkes Night.   The occasion is celebrated by the letting off of fireworks and by burning Guy Fawkes in effigy on bonfires – except at Lewes in Sussex where every year the townspeople gather to burn the Pope in effigy, since this was seen, not completely inaccurately, as a Catholic plot.  It can be fun.  I have enjoyed many Guy Fawkes parties, and I like setting off fireworks as much as the next person – my faves are rockets.

What always used to annoy me was people who decided to set their fireworks off just to annoy other people – like at three o’clock in the morning.  If you want to be very, very charitable you could suggest that maybe these were people doing shift work, and who were unable to celebrate the occasion any earlier.  I would be touched by your open mindedness but I would disagree with you.  People who do that are yobs and dickheads.  They get more pleasure from the knowledge that they are making  loud noises in the middle of the night, to disturb people, than they do from the occasion itself.  There was little  that one could do about it though, except wait for it to end.

In the last couple of years, though, I have discovered that the same kind of dickheaddery also attends the celebration of the fourth of July.   For most people, the day is a matter of parties, cookouts, barbecues, get-togethers at the homes of friends or family members, and after dark a firework display, either private or at some civic venue.  And a jolly good time is had by all.   But then, way into the night, when all that can be heard outside are the crickets and the tree frogs (I speak of where I live – I suspect the Sound of the Night is different in, say, Manhattan or Detroit), the firework morons start up.  They have a definite preference for fireworks that go bang – never mind beautiful displays of coloured lights. And they do not confine themselves to the fourth.  The days, or rather nights, leading up to the fourth, and away from it, are equally assailed by their detonations.  I fully expect tonight to be the same.  I am resigned to it, but I must admit that I am hoping for a torrential downpour, to wash them out!
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Comments

[Tina Marie]

Same here. The kids next door had left over fireworks and decided to blow them up last night. Fortunately they finished before 10 pm for which I was grateful.

[J]

I hope you got some rain to stop the idiots. They're everywhere. Somehow we didn't have them this year, though we usually do...I wonder if they went to Florida to visit you? If so, sorry. Send them to Wasilla next year!

I enjoyed reading about your Guy Fawkes parties. Always nice to get a hint into other cultures. Even when that other culture is SO close to our own...and yet not...