poor guy

I've been in York a lot over the last few days. Amazing as it is, it's not a great place for fireworks - and now will the UK readers bear with me while I explain to the US readers about Bonfire Night.

Four hundred years ago, on 5 November, a group of devout but very extreme catholics plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament with the king and all the MPs in it. They were discovered just as the explosives expert, Guy Fawkes, was lighting the fuse. It all came to a very unpleasant end for the plotters, and ever since there have been bonfires and fireworks all over the UK on 5 November. In some places they still burn an effigy of poor old Guy Fawkes, a brave man, if a deluded one.

Personally, I suspect that there have always been bonfires in November to clear up all the autumn debris, long before Guy Fawkes. It can be great fun - bonfires, fireworks, hot soup, jacket potatoes, and parkin (if you live in Yorkshire - it's a sticky gingerbread). The downside is the flashes and bangs which can terrify cats and dogs even if you do keep them indoors, and there are always people around who shouldn't be allowed near anything more explosive than a party popper. (If you do have an autumn bonfire, always check in case there's a hedgehog hiding in there before you light it.)

And it's all wrong to burn anyone in effigy, even someone who's been dead for 400 years. Now, Guy Fawkes was born and brought up in York. He was baptised at St Michael-le-Belfry and educated at St Peter's School. So York is a bit fastidious about Bonfire Night, and St Peter's School don't, as far as I know observe it at all.