Remember, remember, the Fifth of November...

…gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot...

  

Between fifty and sixty years ago, when I was a child growing up in a small Lancashire village, November 5^th, more commonly known in Britain as Bonfire or Guy Fawkes Night,  was probably the most important date in the calendar after Christmas, Easter and birthdays. From early October the local village shops would display fireworks for sale and as the month drew on, we would start to hear the occasional ‘banger’ being set off early by local boys.

Towards the end of the month, our parents would give my sisters and me ten shillings between us (50 pence now, but worth a great deal more back then) to buy our annual selection of fireworks before the shops ran out of our favourites. Oh, the agony of selection – almost as bad as that of choosing our Saturday sweets!  Catherine wheels, Roman candles, rockets, fountains,  and of course the essential handheld sparklers, even the names transport me straight back to childhood and the growing excitement as Bonfire Night came closer.

But there was much more to Bonfire Night than fireworks. Above all there was the bonfire to be built, in a grassy hollow on the hillside above our mother’s laboriously terraced garden. One October Saturday our father would take us down to the local woods, where we would collect fallen branches and tie them in bundles to be dragged home up the steep field above the woods. Later he helped us to build the bonfire, making sure it would burn well and not collapse too soon, and adding to it any odds and ends of burnable material which had been accumulating in the coal cellar for months.

Then there was the guy to be made, a task which was ours alone. An old shirt or jumper or jacket of our father’s or grandfather’s, together with a pair of ancient trousers or overalls and some holey socks would be stuffed with hay, straw or newspaper until we had an approximation of a human figure, with a bag for a head, and, if we were lucky, an old cap or hat on top.

We were never allowed to go out begging for ‘Pennies for the guy’ as more fortunate schoolmates sometimes did. Instead our guy stayed safe and dry indoors until the time came for him to be fixed firmly on top of the bonfire. In the meantime our mother would be busy too, making hard, dark and beautifully brittle treacle toffee to be sucked as we watched the bonfire burn and the fireworks go off.

Finally the day itself would dawn, with fervent prayers from even the most sceptical child that the weather would stay dry and not be too windy. No weekend communal bonfires and firework displays back then. November 5^th was Bonfire Night and only the most appalling of weather would change that.

Our small family bonfire was always lit early in the evening, straight after high tea, and we would gather round it with the neighbouring children and watch our father set off the fireworks one by one, while we traced fiery patterns in the night air with our sparklers and ruined our teeth with treacle toffee. When we were older we would sometimes put potatoes in the embers and leave them to bake while we were busy elsewhere.

For our small family bonfire wasn't the only one we attended each November 5^th. Our farmer neighbours had an old, open-fronted quarry on their land and in it their large extended family would build the biggest bonfire I have ever seen. Once our small bonfire was reduced to glowing embers we children would all decamp to the quarry for a spectacular blaze. Adventurous youngsters would scale the lower reaches of the quarry sides to set off fireworks from vantage points above the enormous bonfire, while the rest of us toasted ourselves and watched the excitement.

Eventually even this fire would die down, which was the signal for everyone to head back to the farmhouse kitchen for meat and potato pie cooked in enormous enamel bowls and shared with the multitude. Finally we would walk down the short lane from the farm to our cottage and fall into bed, exhausted, replete and happy, to dream of flames and fireworks and fun.

This November 5^th I shall be otherwise occupied, but on the drive to and from the hospital, I shall while away the miles with Bonfire Night reminiscences and maybe even a piece or two of treacle toffee.

Images via Google

La Fête Communale

I’m starting to think that the soft, mild, and at present damp air of Normandy may have an unexpected affect on the ageing British brain, or at least my ageing British brain. To all outward appearances I think (hope?) that I appear to be functioning normally, but when it comes to sitting down in front of my precious new laptop and actually writing something coherent, my brain has been acting like a toddler in a tantrum, drumming its heels and yelling at the top of its voice “Can’t, won’t, don’t want to!”

It’s not that nothing has been happening, though life here is usually enjoyably quiet and slow-moving. Nor is it that I haven’t had ideas for posts, or at least snatches of ideas, and even potential titles. It’s just that faced with that blank screen and conscious of the fact that I still find Windows 7 intimidating and sometimes yearn for my old desktop with its undemanding Windows XP, the combination of brain plus idea just hasn’t been gelling into a proper post.

However I’ve now reached the point at which I must put fingers to keyboard and a post into Blogger or stay silent for another week at least, as tomorrow is the day when Grandson#3 arrives for a week’s holiday without his parents, and normal life will be put on hold until he goes home again.

So to give you a glimpse of what I’ve been doing, other than mowing and pruning and generally working my socks off in the garden, here are a few snaps of the fête communale  which our little commune holds on the last Sunday in July every year. DH and I always go, rain or shine, and after the protracted mid-day meal, which gathers together more than half the inhabitants round long tables in the village hall for a couple of hours, we enjoy watching the inter-village games between our commune and a neighbouring one.

Bowling uphill!

It’s all very gentle and uncomplicated, with much the same games every year, but there is a definite friendly rivalry between the participants and a good time is had by all. As well as games for adults (usually carried out with great energy by the young farmers) there are games for the children, plus sideshows and even a bouncy castle. The weather is the most changeable factor and since this year it was very grey and distinctly damp, I’m taking the liberty of borrowing a few of the much brighter photos taken by my youngest sister when she and her husband visited us for the fête a couple of years ago. Yes, we do get sunshine in Normandy – just not quite as often as we might wish. J

Bobbing for apples - thank goodness it was warm!

Find the carrots in the hay.....

Commando course for kids

Why can't they have one of these for the grown-ups?

Sixty years of service

Sixty years ago today I was 5 years old (well, 5 ¾ actually) and confined to bed, as I gradually recovered from a bad attack of measles. I can still vividly remember that February day when my grandmother, who lived next-door, came into the bedroom to tell me that it had just been announced on the radio that the King had died in the night. An unusual thing to tell a five-year-old, perhaps, but she was genuinely upset and it is my first memory of any event beyond our small family circle.

Fast forward 16 months, to the cold and damp June day of the new Queen’s coronation. This is another indelible memory for me, as it marks my first experience of television. All over Britain people stretched their budgets to buy a set in order to be able to watch this rare event. Among them was a family who lived just up the hill from our cottage. They were the only people we knew who had television and they kindly invited all the children from our cluster of houses to gather round the tiny black and white screen to watch the pageantry unfold.

My third childhood memory of the Queen can’t be dated exactly, but I can’t have been more than 8. By then we had moved out of the town where I was born and lived in a small village on the western fringe of the Pennines. One morning my parents took my younger sisters and me into town on the early bus and we stood for what seemed like hours in the town centre, overlooking the market place and Town Hall, waiting to see the young Queen, who was visiting our part of Lancashire that day. I remember the cavalcade of cars coming down the road from the station amid a forest of waving arms, and then having a tiny figure in a pale coat, on a distant stage outside the Town Hall, pointed out to me as the Queen.

From those childhood memories onward, an awareness of the Queen as our hard-working head of state has been the background to my entire life. So today is, for me at least, not a day to debate the merits of monarchy versus presidency as a system for providing a head of state, nor is it a day to dwell on the inevitable failings of any one individual or family. Rather it is a day to acknowledge with gratitude a lifetime of dedicated service by one woman to her country and its people, and to say that today, as every day, I am glad and proud to be British.

Images via Wikipedia and Google

Stop Press!

You don’t have to be a regular reader of my blog to realise that it doesn’t normally do current affairs or news, other than trying occasionally to grapple with the vagaries of Blogger. However today is an exception. 

I spent much of this morning writing a new post, which involved more research than usual, including looking for suitable images, for which Wikipedia is often a very useful resource.  Thus it was that I came across the news that tomorrow (January 18) the English Wikipedia site will be blacked out for 24 hours as part of a worldwide protest at what are seen as attacks on the freedom of the internet. There is a full explanation HERE, and not wanting my readers to be faced with inactive links, my post has been filed until the protest is over.

It is salutary to realise that, until faced with its absence for just one day, I, like most people, had come to take the availability of Wikipedia, whenever I need it, entirely for granted. With all its faults and limitations it is a extraordinary compilation of information and images and we bloggers would find life more difficult without it. Thank you, Wikipedia, and long may you flourish unimpeded.


Image, as so often, via Wikipedia

Light in the darkness

Yesterday DH and I went shopping, a not unusual activity at this time of year, but a task usually avoided by us both like the plague, except for necessities. It was cheering to see the shops and streets decorated for the festivities, though a little worrying to see how relatively quiet they were so close to Christmas. I think many shoppers are pulling their horns in this year and the shops must be feeling the pinch.

On our return I settled down with a nice pot of tea to look though that day’s posts in Google Reader and thoroughly enjoyed the glimpse of a traditional German Christmas market, as given by Friko on Friko's World, just as I recently appreciated the tempting images of aspects of Christmas Spanish-style, as supplied by Annie on Moving On.

I think this juxtaposition may be why today’s shocking attack at the Christmas market in Liege in Belgium has hit me with particular force and left me feeling very unChristmassy indeed. Seeing ordinary lives torn apart by violence in the middle of the very activity DH and I had been doing yesterday brings home yet again the horror of man's inhumanity to man. It sometimes seems that our world is moving ever further from the angels’ message of “Peace on Earth and goodwill towards men”, a sad thought to ponder only 12 days before Christmas.

To comfort myself and remind myself that Advent is all about hopeful expectation, even in the midst of sadness and suffering, I have just listened again to the exquisite Advent Song, written by Christine McIntosh and set to music by her husband John, and posted very recently on her blog blethers. The words are here, and the music, sung by their church choir, is below. I hope it may speak to you as it has to me.

Image: Paul Brentnall / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A milestone birthday

In just over a week I will be officially old J On Easter Day, that greatest of Christian festivals, I will qualify to draw my church pension and will celebrate a birthday I once wondered whether I would live to see. Before then, however, we have another important family birthday to celebrate: that of Grandson #1, which falls tomorrow.

Luckily, given our fading memories, all three grandsons’ birthdays are easy to remember. Grandson #3 was born on another of the great festivals of the church (and one of my favourites) – Epiphany, while Grandson #2’s arrival coincided with our wedding anniversary. How sensible of Prince William and his fiancée to choose such an auspicious date for their wedding.

However, I remember the birth of Grandson #1 for a very different reason.

Just before Christmas twelve years ago, when DD was 5 months pregnant, I was diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time. In the initial daze of shock and fear I briefly wondered whether I would even live to see the birth of our first grandchild and certainly whether I would be fortunate enough to watch him or her grow up. As it turned out, I was one of the lucky ones, whose cancer had been found early and was eminently treatable.

Early in the New Year I had surgery, and a few weeks after that started on a 5-week course of radiotherapy. This necessitated my making a daily round-trip of 88 miles on country roads to the nearest District General Hospital – three hours of driving for three minutes of treatment. I beguiled the tedium of the journeys with the wonders of audio-books and with daydreaming about my impending grandmotherhood, to which I was looking forward immensely.

The course of radiotherapy finished a fortnight before the baby was due. Ten days later I drove through a mid-April snowstorm to visit DD, who had been admitted early to hospital, and to stay with our son-in-law until the birth. We didn’t know whether it would be a boy or a girl, as DD and her husband hadn’t wanted to spoil the surprise. In the event we welcomed with joy and gratitude the safe arrival of the first of our three grandsons, and suddenly life took on a whole new dimension and meaning.

After my operation, the kindly consultant had given me a very good prognosis, but the radiotherapy and the driving had been hard work. Now the birth of this first grandchild brought me a new sense of optimism and hope for a future that had for a little while seemed doubtful. I could look forward again, not back, and could trust that, barring accidents, I would indeed live to see him grow up. Even a totally unexpected recurrence of the cancer when he was six didn’t destroy this hope, though it certainly dented it for a time, until tests showed that again I had been fortunate and the cancer had not spread.

Now, as the magic age of 65 looms, I am so glad still to be here and watching all three grandsons growing up into loveable, talented and unique individuals. Each birthday is celebrated as the significant milestone it is, but still, for me, the birthday of Grandson #1 has a special meaning, as I remember what might have been and give renewed thanks for what is and what may yet be to come. Having had cancer twice, I know that the future can never be taken for granted, but at present life is good and I am content, and always, always grateful. 

Images

As the horrifying events in Japan have unfolded over the past days, I’ve been very aware of being a mere onlooker, safe on the other side of the world. But as our TV screens have poured out their reports from the stricken areas, I’ve found my mind filled with indelible images.

Images of swaying buildings and tumbling furniture and people holding on or running desperately as their world shook and groaned. Of an inky-black wave of muddy water rushing inland over neat, rectangular fields and carrying everything before it. Of cars and containers bobbing like corks on the surging torrent streaming along a city street. Of train carriages lying on their sides, scattered across the ground like children’s toys abandoned and forgotten. Of small wooden houses which had withstood the earthquake, only to crumple into matchwood under the force of the sea. Of debris piled higher than the houses that once stood there. Of mud and emptiness.

Now, a few days later, the images are changing, but just as unforgettable. Images of toiling rescuers, of desperate searches for those who are missing. Of stunned survivors coming home to find their world completely changed. Images of the stricken power station, rocked by repeated explosions, of workers struggling to contain and limit the danger and the damage. Elsewhere there are Images of empty supermarket shelves and silent factories, of power cuts and transport difficulties, as the utilities and conveniences we take so much for granted in developed nations falter in the face of such repeated blows.

But amidst the devastation there are images of hope, of joyful reunions after days of separation, of dogged determination to carry on or start again. The dignity, courage and stoicism of the Japanese people in the face of such overwhelming catastrophe are deeply impressive and have moved me to tears more than once. They deserve the world’s support in the enormous task of rebuilding which lies ahead.

As a distant onlooker I can do little but pray and care and try not to let tomorrow’s fast-changing news make me forget what has happened in Japan, just as I try not to forget the people of Haiti and of so many other troubled areas of our small and threatened planet. My ageing memory isn’t as retentive as it once was, but over the past days it has been filled with images which I think it may never forget, images of the overwhelming force of nature but also of the indomitable spirit of humankind.