Just What Is Bonfire Night?

On Monday night we went to the village's annual fireworks for Bonfire Night, otherwise known as Guy Fawkes Day (Or Night? I'm not sure). This is one of those villagey events that warms the heart and makes me glad I live in a small place where everyone knows everyone else, or just about. We congregate in the sports hall of the private school, where parents serve drinks and my children beg for toffee apples. (Has anyone, I wonder, ever finished a toffee apple? When I have relented and bought one, my child takes maybe two bites and then hands me the sticky mess. They look delicious, but they're not. They're apples on sticks with a little bit of covering.)

I recognize most of the people there, and usually manage to chat to quite a few, although this year I was chasing my fearless toddler, who thinks nothing of zigzagging through the crowds at full tilt, in search of the door to the outside and freedom. Then there are the fireworks, which are quite spectacular for a village our size.

This is a photo I took on the night; sorry it's blurry. But there is a sense of solidarity, standing outside in the cold and the dark, watching something together. It makes you feel part of a community. Which is why it's easy to forget the origin of Guy Fawkes Day, which is remembering a man who tried to blow up Parliament in 1605. Apparently people lit bonfires in thanksgiving for the king's life being spared, and Guy Fawkes was tortured, hung, and then quartered, with the parts of his body being sent to the four corners of the kingdom. Try explaining that to your six-year-old.

In many parts of the country people still burn a 'Guy' or a straw man on the bonfire, although this custom did not actually start until the mid 1800s, due to a high anti-Catholic sentiment at the time. There are few effigies burned in West Cumbria,  as it has a large number of Catholics, for which I'm thankful, because I don't think I'd like to explain that element to my children.

However, its grisly beginnings aside, I do enjoy Bonfire Night, or Fireworks Night, as we call it here, since there is no bonfire. And it seems appropriate to have fireworks to celebrate some fireworks that didn't happen. 

I included Bonfire Night in my upcoming book Rainy Day Sisters, and offered an American's perspective on some of the more gruesome aspects--having Guy Fawkes Day explained to me as a new ex-pat was, I remember, a bit unsettling. One good thing about having the country's annual fireworks day in November, at least, is that you don't have to wait until nine o'clock for it to be dark enough to set them off, as you do in America with the Fourth of July. We watched the fireworks and were home by eight o'clock. Excellent.

My eldest daughter was born (in England) on November 3, and the sound of fireworks can still bring me back to the days after her rather difficult birth, when I was cradling her and listening to the hiss and booms of fireworks going off in the distance. She turned sixteen on Monday and came to the Fireworks Night with me. And so time passes.

Reflections on the School Run

When we lived in New York, our school run looked like this:

(This is actually a photo of our moving truck outside our apartment, the day we left). While in New York we had to wake the children by 6:30 am, and they had to be out of the house by 7:20 to make the school bus three long avenue blocks away. No matter how much I prepared: making their lunches the night before, setting out bowls and cups and cereal boxes, having their uniforms all laid out... we were always late! The morning would start out slow and sleepy and then by 7:22 we were all rushing [ie panicking], shouting, children begging to take a cab to school, us saying absolutely not [although sometimes we caved and spent $20 on a cab--oh, New York life!) before my husband hustled everyone out the door on his way to work and they sprinted from Madison Avenue and 91st Street to Third Avenue and 90th. (Which doesn't sound that far, but trust me, it is.)

Now my school run looks like this:

It's a seven minute walk down the high street of my village, past sheep fields and a little post office shop, and then up a little lane to the school. I'ts very pleasant, and my children don't have to be at school until the luxuriously late hour of 9 am.

And yet. You know what's coming, don't you? We're still late. We still rush, panic, shout, scream. Children don't demand a cab, but rather the car--which I always say no to, because parking is horrendous. But every day as I chivvy them up the street, huffing and puffing as I push the stroller, realising my five-year-old has not brushed her hair and my ten-year-old has not brushed his teeth, and I forgot to sign a note/bring gym uniform/pack a snack/all of the above, I think: how can this be? How can the school run be an hour and a half later than in New York, and much shorter, and yet I am still rushing?

I've come to this rather obvious conclusion: It's either the nature of school runs or the nature of me.