This month is the four hundredth and seventh year since the execution of a man who made November into a global brand!
He was born in 1570 to a supposedly Protestant family. Secretly however they were Catholic. He fought for Spain against the Dutch and, during the reign of James I, he expressed frustration because a Scottish monarch was King of England (This was a hundred years before Scotland and England signed the act of union in 1707) He travelled to Spain to win support for a Catholic rebellion in England but, despite failing, he did meet people who would later put 36 barrels of gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament. He was frustrated by the way in which officialdom, not content with having the power over the big things in people’s lives, wanted also to dictate the minutiae of life, including what was believed and how words were used.
He was executed on 31st January 1606. But it is November 5th when we remember him, and regular readers of this column may recall how, in the early nineteen fifties, I was party to an unexpected experiment conducted on: ‘Guy Fawkes Night.’
We lived on top of a very steep hill which had a road surface made up of pebbles. One day in July the Council came and applied a thick coating of something called Gas-Tar. This tricky operation took two weeks, and on completion we had various officials around to view this exciting advance in road surface technology.
For a couple of months all went well as the only vehicles to ascend the 1 in 5 slope were the horses and carts of the coalman, the milkmen and the greengrocer. It was however, only later that it became apparent that whilst executing this new advance in road making, the officials had failed to take into account a local custom of long standing, and one which was to have serious consequences for their much publicised achievements.
For some weeks prior to November the 5th the residents of the hill would scour their houses, sheds, allotments and surrounding countryside for tyres, wood, paper, pieces of lino and anything flammable. At the appointed time the entire population gathered the material into a huge pile in the middle of the road on top of the hill.
This particular year, a very old two seater sofa had been placed on top of the pile on which was seated a trilby-topped effigy of a corpulent ‘Councillor Bonsor’ who, for some reason, had been chosen to be reviled by this act of public humiliation.
At 6pm the fire was lit and soon became a mighty conflagration as the various combustible materials successively ignited. An occasional explosion caused excitement as batteries and accumulators gave way to internal pressures and Councillor Bonsor’s trilby blew off in the upward rush of flames and heat.
It was about 6.40pm however, that we began to notice that the ground beneath us was getting sticky and had a blue shimmering flame over its surface. At this point someone suggested we all get top-side of the fire, as the whole surface of the new road began to melt, burn, and run downhill like a slow, black, sulphurous version of the Severn Bore.
It took two days to extinguish the fire and 1953 also proved to be the last year at which the Bonfire was held in the middle of the road. Councillor Bonsor however, continued in office a little longer.
Older readers will by now be saying, “This couldn’t happen today. Health and Safety wouldn’t allow it!” They are right, and although many welcome changes have been made, most modern ‘officials’ seem just as keen to interfere in the details of how we live our lives as were those who annoyed Guy Fawkes and his chums.
Unlike him, I can’t recommend blowing up buildings at Westminster. But there are other ways to ‘blow up’ those who restrict our basic liberties and our little freedoms. The chief weapon at our disposal is not gunpowder but the vote which, for most of us has usually gone to The Party, but which we now might try and give to The Person. I like to think it would make Guy Fawkes happy to see us give our votes to individual rather than political groupings that are as out-of-touch with the common man as they were in his day.
However, thinking about things that could not happen today reminds me of a recent tale by a friend who, as a young man, would travel by river and canal with his father Harry and Uncle Jim to Birmingham. They would fill their two barges with coal and bring it to the river wharf at Maisemore for sale around the area.
Around 1920 a Newent farmer and his son, both noted for being very careful with money went into Gloucester by bus. Unfortunately whilst there the old man took sick and suddenly died. The son was devastated and his mind became stuck on one thing only. He had to get his father back home and lay him out in the front room of the farmhouse.
He carried the body unnoticed onto the bus and, placing his father on the window seat in the second row, sat down beside him. The bell rang and the conductor started issuing tickets and eventually came to row two.
“That will be tuppence” he said! At this, the son’s grief temporarily disappeared and he; we shall call him Albert, replied that he was not going to pay full fare as his father was not actually there to enjoy the ride.
The conductor was adamant and an impasse arose. However, a fellow passenger intervened and, after much discussion, the Conductor agreed that Albert should pay full fare but that his father could travel at the cost of a suitcase.
View from the Pew 