Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night
Before I read this thread, on the way home form work I decided I was gonna watch V for vendetta tonight!
All the Brits on the forum probably know all this but I guess others might not,
When I was a kid, it was really popular for groups of children to make a "Guy" an effigy of Mr Fawkes.
They would then go from door to door, with the Guy in a wheel barrow - asking for money, "penny for the guy", was the expression. Quite often they spent the money on a small box of simple fire works - let off in the garden, or on the local green where a bonfire would be lit to burn the Guys. (I also remember it as being so much colder in those days)
I never really joined in because I always felt that I was kind of "on his side" and had no inclination to burn him at all!
My family were Catholics, but that wasn't the reason. (Although I did find it odd even at a young age, that Catholic kids joined in so fervently - (I didn't know it then of course, but that must have been my first awareness of Ponerization)
Then I realised that I could
secretly celebrate the evening as Guy Fawkes' attempt to blow up Parliament, not his capture!
So I could join in after all, and no one was any the wiser! :D
The "Guys" seem to have disappeared years ago, and I was thinking only last week, how "penny for the guy" seems to have been totally wiped out by "trick or treating" a week earlier, a practice that simply did not exist when I was young, so poor old Guy, though he is spared the flames, has almost been completely forgotten.
As I grew older I was interested in the history behind the man and the first book I read was by Antonia Frasier, and that led me on to many others. I think I respected him even more when I discovered his real role in the event, as the earlier posts in this thread sum up rather well,
Anyway, as I say, I will watch "V" tonight whilst the bangs go off out side the house and take comfort in the fact that some one somewhere is watching it too!
