Guy Fawkes Weekend

Oh yes, England has holidays we don't have: Guy Fawkes day was this Friday.  Made famous by V for Vendetta, which is an awesome movie that was not in the common room to watch because someone swiped it for their own personal viewing at some point before me and my crew got there - much to our annoyance.

For the actual history I defer to Dr. Philpott who sent us all an information e-mail:

Remember, remember the Fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason, and plot

We know no reason 

Why Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot. 

Well, like lots of other things in this country you have to go back a long way to answer that question -  to 5 November 1605, to be precise.

On that day a plot by a small group of Roman Catholic terrorists to blow up the King, James I, and both Houses of Parliament at the State Opening of Parliament was foiled by the arrest of their explosives expert, Guy (or Guido) Fawkes in the cellars of the Palace of Westminster. (If you visit the Ashmolean,  you can see the lamp that Guy had with him.) The aim of the plotters appears to have been to destroy the whole Protestant establishment in England at one fell swoop leaving the way open to a Roman Catholic coup. However, one of the plotters seems to have sent a message to a relation who was a member of the House of Lords to miss the State Opening and the plot was discovered. Guy was arrested as he arrived to light the fuse. A service in celebration of this deliverance (the so-called ‘Gunpowder Service’) was added to the Book of Common Prayer and observed according to Royal Proclamation until 1859.

The sense of 5 November being a special date in England's history was further reinforced in 1688, when a group of grandees alienated by the high-handed and inept government of the Roman Catholic King James II and fearing his religion and close alliance with France foreshadowed an attempt to impose Roman Catholicism and ‘arbitrary government’ on England, invited his Protestant nephew and son-in-law, Prince William of Orange, to come to the rescue. Sped by what later eulogists called ‘the Protestant Wind’, William landed in England on 5 November. James fled, in a futile and childish gesture towards disrupting the government dropping the Great Seal in the river Thames as he went. After a certain amount of disruption and disorder (including some of the local agents of James' government being besieged in the Mitre Inn on the High Street),  the Crown was given to William and his wife, Mary, jointly, and the succession reserved to Protestant claimants, concluding what English (but not Scottish or Irish) historians  traditionally call(ed) ‘The Glorious Revolution’.

Almost everywhere in England the traditions of  ‘Bonfire Night’ as it is known have long since lost the anti-Catholic element which was a marked feature of celebrations in earlier years. In Oxford in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Bonfire Night was also often a time of serious town-gown troubles and even outright rioting. A rather sad (and late) reflection of this can be seen in Brasenose College Chapel in the  memorial to a late nineteenth-century undergraduate killed in a 5 November riot.

Most English people, although they might know the rhyme above, would have little or no knowledge of the history of what is regarded as a fun, autumn festival especially for children and the young-at-heart. Traditions revolve around the building of  a great bonfire either by individual families in their back gardens or by communities on village greens. ‘Guys’ are made by stuffing old clothes with newspapers and putting a mask for the face - usually symbolizing Guy Fawkes himself, although sometimes others. Small children used quite often to be seen in the streets with a guy (usually in a battered old pram) and a badly painted sign saying ‘Penny for the Guy', but this is now pretty rare, although I did see a particularly impressive Frankenstein's monster guy with matching Frankenstein's monster children a few years back. The money is then usually used to buy extras for the Bonfire Party. Once the bonfire is good and alight, fireworks will be set off - rockets and bangers, Catherine wheels and screamers, and (my personal favourite) sparklers which you hold in your hand and trace pretty patterns of sparks in the dark night.  The guy is then thrown or put into the centre of the bonfire and burnt. Some people hide fireworks in the guy but this can be extremely dangerous and is best avoided. Meanwhile, all sorts of things can be baked, roasted or toasted in and around the bonfire - potatoes, chestnuts, fingers, marshmallows...

And all this on a crisp November night, all wrapped up against the cold in winter coats, big mufflers, woolly hats and gloves.... Thus a time of fear and hatred transforms itself into a festival about family and fun, sharing and warmth...

Please to remember the Fifth of November

Pretty interesting yes?  I thought so, but had no plans to commemorate it... more about that later.

Anyway, Lady Katherine had a friend visiting from Norway who was really curious to meet me who I had promised to go out with after dinner on Friday.  I kept my promise, we went to Que Pasa which is a great place to go before 9pm because they have two for one cocktails every night until that hour.  Some guy at the bar overheard and apparently really enjoyed my giving advice on boys and such to the group of cute giggling girls all dressed up for the occasion and bought our whole table a round of drinks.  This was very awkward (largely because he must have been 30 something and there was one of him and five of us) but we have gotten to know the staff at this place and the bartender delivered them personally so I deemed them safe to consume (they were too).  This had the added effect of putting 4 long island iced teas in yours truly instead of the 2 she intended to consume.  Two for one drinks, five of us, guess who was drinking both of hers while everyone else split?  Crypt Keeper, of course.

Then we left, because it was strange and because we were more than happy with our consumption for the time being.  We waved as politely as possible... not sure if that's the protocol, but we weren't going to go talk to him either I mean, come on.  Who does that?  And what do they possibly think will come of it?  Moving on.

Lady Katherine's friend turned out not to have proper cash money for her bus ticket home - poor planning there, always travel with enough local currency to cover local transportation if you go anywhere.  Since we had to remedy this and it was inconvenient for her to use an ATM (called Cash Points here) due to not knowing her pin (another travel Don't) we agreed to pay her cash for purchase of some bottles of Bacardi at the local Tesco, which we proceeded to drink in the common room while watching movies... though NOT, as I mentioned, V for Vendetta.  We substituted History of the World Part I and something else I don't remember because we were drinking Bacardi.

All this lovely revelry led to the hang-over that dominated Saturday in its entirety for me up until 6 pm - with much agony and all the usual hang-over activities.  When I finally did emerge from my room in the pursuit of food, having missed both brunch and dinner, to get my Ramen Noodle on... I was seized by Claire and company to go see something burned in effigy for Saturday night's Oxford Guy Fawkes festival.  I thought perhaps this might be in the town centre or possibly at the large bus station clearing - both of which were near our dwelling and so agreed.

This turned out to have been a stupid assumption.  Once we had walked for some 10 minutes I started to wonder exactly where the hell we were going... only to discover it was basically the other side of town.  Having come too far to turn back myself, I had little choice but to press on with the group grumbling about being old and ill and generally miserable.  We saw some fireworks and a burning wicker man.  It wasn't so bad once we got there; it was even better when we turned for home.  Huzzah.  Tally up one more English experience!  All ended well, with my Ramen and some tea, and since I had slept the vast majority of the day anyway we stayed up watching Planet Earth dvds from my personal collection which was quite soothing.

So, with all that having consumed Friday evening, Saturday day and night (which was intended to be library time for Viking Literature paper due Tuesday), today I got up for brunch and read both Dante's Inferno for colloquium tomorrow and the Volsung Saga for my Viking Literature paper which I will be researching tomorrow morning and then writing the paper for tomorrow afternoon / evening.  Huzzah.

Tomorrow is Monday already isn't it?  /sigh.