Judy P's Tickle Trunk

…..or Guy Fawkes Night

It was mauzy outside so I had my bonfire indoors this year and decided to have bonfire food for supper. Well, kind of. Sausage substituted for hot dogs and instead of a lonely foil wrapped up potato, I chopped some and wrapped them in foil with the bangers and sliced onion and cooked them in the coals.

The WHO would not approve I suppose but it was darned good eating.

But bonfire night was never really about the food – it was about building as big a blaze as you could using whatever flammable junk you could find (and sometimes the not so flammable). Don’t know if there is as much enthusiasm for bonfires as there was when I was a kid but even if I don’t have a fire every year I certainly recall the occasion. Here is a link to my previous Bonfire Night blog. And here’s the history of it again in an old English poem:

The Fifth of November

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England’s overthrow.
But, by God’s providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James’s sake!
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

© Judy Parsons 2015