Bonfire night & Guy Fawkes
As a child, so many of us loved this time of year. There was the fun of dunking our heads in a bowl of water, to catch floating apples, on the evening before All Saints (All Hallows). Better – and sweeter – still, was the practice of tying an apple on a string, covering it in maple syrup, and dangling it from the old, remnant, gas pipe in the kitchen ceiling, then trying to catch it in our open mouths, with our hands behind our backs. So much fun, joy and laughter – even into later years! There was no such thing as ‘trick or treat’ back then; that Americanism was still far from our shores. Look at these three pix I’ve found of friends during my first year at the Franciscan Study Centre, Canterbury, Hallow’ E’en 1980! The one dressed as a nun was in the same novitiate as me, 1979. The Benedictine Monk with an apple in his mouth grew up just a few streets away from me in Cardiff, yet we never knew each other until we met at Canterbury, all those years later. And the one dressed as some sort of Florentine Renaissance Man was our Father Guardian!
Straight after Hallow e’en was the commemoration of when Guy Fawkes tried to blow up England’s Parliament, remembered now as Bonfire Night. As children, we would get some old clothes, usually from my father’s wardrobe, stuff them with newspapers, and make them into a “Guy”. We would then compete with our friends on who could get the best street corner or position to sit at, and beg from passers by, “penny for the Guy, please, Mister!”
The best position was against the telephone exchange hub, outside the Roath Labour Club, on the corner of our street! There was a captive audience for all the men (and few women, in those days) going in to down some pints. We could earn enough money to buy some sparklers and sweets, out of the proceeds. I think a packet of sparklers cost 6d (6 old pence, now equivalent of two and a half pence)! Try buying anything for that these days! Makes me sound like an “grumpy old git”, but even going into a public loo is now around 50p: that’s TEN SHILLINGS – or ten bob – for a pee!
Many good memories of those two dates, over the years, but the memories of the 5th of November (or thereabouts) was tarnished a few years ago. I had been to Twickenham to watch an international rugby game. On the trains, coming home, John phoned and said “remember not to get off at Blackheath; the firework display is on and there are no buses through the village”. So I travelled on the Greenwich line, and got off at Charlton. Never again! The trauma of that night reverberates in my mind even to this day.
It was only about 7pm, but dark, of course, since the shorter autumnal days and clocks going back an hour just a few weeks earlier. I came out of the station and crossed the road to the bus stop, opposite. There was a young oriental man sitting there, on his phone, and two adolescent / teenage black girls standing near by. They were being rather loud and, sexually, very provocative and indiscreet! (that’s me saying it as politely as I can!)
As the next train came and went, 9 young black teenage boys – no more than about 15 – 17 years old – came out of the station, on the other side of the road. Some of them knew the girls, and shouted across to them, in even more sexually provocative ways. But I could over-hear one of the boys, in conversation with another say “Cut their fucking jaws off! That’ll make them remember you! That’ll teach them to respect you!”
Anal sphincter into mega tight panic mode!
I was ****ing myself in fear! They started coming across the road towards us, and still being – what I thought – totally inappropriate in what they were saying to the young females. And the two at the back were still talking out loud. I could hear words such as “blade” “knife him” “respect” … Then he said something that sends a shiver down my spine to this very day: “… he wont be able to swallow proper ever again, nor speak, bruv, but make him say your name, make him say it, then he’ll remember you; then he’ll ‘spect you!”
Oh my God!
By this time, all four of us on the bus stop were surrounded by these lads. I was just hoping and praying that there would be no trouble at all. I don’t know who that one kid was talking about, to “blade” and mutilate another human being’s jaw, and was hoping he didn’t mean either the oriental lad or myself. With those thoughts swirling around my mind, and heart racing, the bus came. The girls got on, and I hung back to see what these 9 boys were going to do. They weren’t that keen on the idea of a first-come-first-on-the-bus queue, but that was least of my worries. I let them get on in front of me, then I stood back. The bus doors closed and it started to move off. With that, I walked really quickly, in the direction of the next stop, and I thought I would wait for a later bus to come. I was shaking with fear and now, relief. But no sooner had I moved out of sight, than I heard the bus come to a screeching halt, and the siren alarm was sounded, with flashing hazard lights. The doors opened, the driver was shouting, and the nine lads got off. By this time I was a good bit ahead and I just legged it! Fortunately for me, they didn’t follow, but went off in the opposite direction.
My abiding thought about that whole terrifying event was: what sort of world have bred, that human beings can be like this to others, simply for a bit of “‘spect”!
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