So tonight is Guy Fawkes Night. Incredble to think that 400 years after this “Catholic terrorist” was hung, drawn & quartered for the ‘Gunpowder Plot’ of 1605, when he & his co-conspirators tried to blow up all the members of the Houses of Parliament as well as King James, we are still celebrating his capture, torture & execution. It is a story that all children have drummed into them at primary school in state-sponsored brainwashing of the most ruthless kind, where we are all taught to remember the rhyme ‘Remember remember the 5th of November’. The State never wanted us to forget it. Now thanks to V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes & his masked visage have gone worldwide as a symbol of anarchy, revolution, counter culture, resistance. A curious villain and hero at the same time. All it meant to me as a child was I had to be miserably dragged miles to the local park to watch the boring firework display in the freezing cold just wishing I was home the whole time. I have NEVER understood the appeal of fireworks. Even as a child they just seemed incredibly underwhelming. So much time, effort & money invested in something that came & went in about five seconds. Later I was to have the same thoughts about my love life and relationships in general, but as a child that was still to discover. But Guy Fawkes goes into the mix as making this the most magical time of year (especially to a Scorpio like myself, BORN into it). First the clocks go back and it suddenly gets so much darker so much earlier, then Halloween, then Guy Fawkes night, all in the space of a week, and then no sooner has Firework Night finished then it is poppy season leading up to Remembrance Day, & then that is the cue for the Christmas lights to go up everywhere and Christmas to begin. We will speak of my contempt for THAT institution nearer the time. Suffice now to celebrate this wonderful time of year, dark, foggy, sulphur in the air. The 1930s Hungarian visitor to London Antal Szerb said “In London November isn't a month, it's a state of mind”. In November the streets of London are literally paved with gold, and we realise this was probably the cause of Dick Whittington’s misunderstanding, when he came up to London, to see the Queen.
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