The Big Bangs

Another Bonfire Night has passed, and the smell of cordite has almost left the common.

For those of you who’ve never heard of it, November 5th is known in the UK as “Guy Fawkes Night”; a night where they light bonfires and set off large number of fireworks to celebrate the death of a certain Guy Fawkes, who plotted to blow up Parliament and thus strike a blow for the cause of the downtrodden Catholics of Britain.

The plan was very nearly flawless – they’d rented a flat which had a large cellar right next to the parliament buildings, security having a slightly different meaning back then (actually, it had much the same meaning, they just weren’t quite as concerned about it as we are, not having Terror Level Alert Systems etc). They filled the cellar with high-powered explosives and set the date.

The night before the planned bombing, a member of the conspiracy had an awkward attack of conscience and wrote a letter to a Catholic priest (it could’ve been a bishop, I’m not sure). The following is not an exact extract from that letter, but it would have gone something like this:

Dear Priest,
If there was a hypothetical Catholic plot to blow up parliament (which there isn’t), tomorrow would be a good day (but there’s no plot) to NOT go anywhere near the parliament buildings. Did I mention that there’s no plot? Also, don’t go to parliament tomorrow.
Yours,
Not A Conspirator
ps. If there was a hypothetical plot, I wouldn’t be involved.

Evidently the details of the plot somehow got out, and when the conspirators (and Guy Fawkes) arrived in the morning to set off the bomb, they were surprised to find a rather large number of guards etc waiting. Things rather went downhill from there for them.

Clapham Common is a large park over the road from us, and is known for (among other things *) its extravagant fireworks display on Bonfire Night. They were certainly loud, although I’m not sure Charlie and Hamilton appreciated them. I’ve only ever seen that many people in the park on the sunny day this summer (the singular is intentional). I suspect that The Windmill had it’s biggest night of all time with a veritable horde of drunken revellers lurching around, pints in hand.

This morning, the Lambeth garbage collectors were out in full force trying to clean the common of the several tonnes of trash left by the thoughtful celebrants, who evidently can’t think ahead to bring a trash bag along with them, and so are forced to leave all their crap all over the place.

* the Common is also known as a place to go for illicit gay sex. I don’t know this from experience, I’ve just heard.
** this explanation may not be entirely historically accurate, and in fact I may have made it all up, but it’s a good story…