First Guy Fawkes Day in London

Today is Guy Fawkes Day here in England, commemorating the foiling of the infamous Gunpowder Plot 401 years ago to blow up the British Parliament along with the Protestant king James I by Catholic insurgents.

Now the British are normally a deeply reserved lot. They queue. They dress identically. They rarely talk to strangers (ie. me).

However, give them alcohol and pyrotechnics and they utterly lose all their prohibitions and become as flawed and human as the rest of us. Really, it’s a wonder to see the transformation.

Right now, fireworks (rather than the original bonfires that originally commemorated this day) are going off all over the UK. Now, generally that means big fireworks displays if you were in Canada. But not for the English. Crazy Londoners are firing off the damn things right in their backyards. And we’re not talking firecrackers and sparklers here. We’re talking full on Victoria Day/Fourth of July/Symphony of Fire type fireworks here, screaming up into the sky only meters from my house, flammability of old Victorian houses be damned (it does make one wonder about the true causes of the Great Fire of London however).

I’m serious. My neighbour kitty corner to me (no, not Sadie Frost, the other kitty corner) is literally firing these things up into the air to the point that I can smell gunpowder and despite my love of all things that whistle, scream and go bang with bright colours, it’s making even me a little twitchy from the proximity. And we’re not talking some wussy 30 minute send off here. Fireworks have been going continually since dark and lighting up the sky. I’m thinking at least an hour and half from my neighbour across the way and it’s a private display (of course, I do have an unusual number of Porsches and Ferraris parked along my street as well). The pictures at right were taken out my front room window.

Oh, and it’s not even just one crazed pyromaniac neighbour. In between salvos I can hear the pops across the hillside that normally indicate full scale Blitz-style attacks or the British on Magners having their way with China’s finest invention.

Wow.