#3: Bonfire Night

-The week leading up to the fifth of November always leaves me feeling like a troubled Vietnam war veteran – not to be melodramatic or anything, but my reaction to huge explosions going off at unexpected times during the night is akin to that of a small dog, in that it puts me on edge, makes me disgruntled, and as a result I want to urinate in unusual places in the house to make a point of this.

-Halloween is bad enough, especially when it falls on a Monday, allowing people who actually buy into it to milk it dry over the course of the weekend, squeezing every drop they can from its spooky udder. Halloween pisses me off because I hate getting heckled by an overweight Beetlejuice / totally unsexy ‘sexy vampiress’ on the tube. Also because, whereas it might only be an annual event for some, I dress like a post-car crash matinee idol every other day of the year, so it’s the one day where I don’t feel special and different.

-After all the trauma of the 31^st of October, we then have Bonfire Night.

-Bonfire Night is a celebration of early 17^th century British prejudice and oppression. Every firework you watch tonight, though they may be pretty and colourful, is effectively celebrating the appalling tokenistic torture and execution of a man who was foiled in a plot to rebel against the totalitarian regime of an absolutist Monarch who was enacting religious oppression against non-protestants.

-Though placed at one remove from the popular consciousness, we still keep this in mind when we burn ‘Guy’ effigies on bonfires.

-Many people don’t think of it this way, but it would effectively be the equivalent of Germans unthinkingly burning an effigy of Johann Georg Elser once a year. I’m pretty sure they would never, ever consider introducing that tradition.

-Right wing country bumpkin creeps in Lewes, a county town in East Sussex, still burn an effigy of the Pope every bonfire night. Try that one out for size on any religious group or denomination other than Catholicism and see if it doesn’t result in widespread condemnation/international outcry/fatwã.

-I have my own personal gripe against Bonfire Night, because I once had a bad mushroom trip on the 5^th of November, and the fireworks really weren’t helpful.

-That is all.