Remember, Remember

November 5th is Guy Fawkes Day over here, which we should all be familiar with, at the very least through watching V for Vendetta. So I won't explain it or give you the little gunpowder treason rhyme. They just call it Bonfire Night over here now, though, I guess similar to Americans generally referring to Independence Day as the Fourth of July, but for reasons more related to activity than date, of course. 

Happily, the 5th was on a Friday this year (not that it matters to me, not having to ever be anywhere before 11 as I do), and I had a date to the festivities in Lewes, a few miles from my campus. This event was put on by several bonfire societies from the town, and each society had its own parade through the streets, and there were several bonfire sites for later in the evening, as well, some free, some with an admission charge. Admission charges for the bonfires in Lewes and for others in Brighton, Hove, and other nearby cities ran from five to fourteen pounds, which I find outrageous (it's pants, question mark?).

Anyway, when planning this whole thing, Ed said the line (queue) for the trains was going to be wicked long, and I suggested we take the bus (since I have a bus pass already bought for each week). He said no go, the roads would be closed for everything, and it's a two hour walk from my campus, etc. So on Friday I took my longish bus ride and walk to the Brighton train station near his house, where there were, as expected, hordes of enthusiastic pyromaniacs, and Ed was waiting in a long line to get to a ticket vending machine. He was not pleased with this, and suggested we take the bus instead. It was like one of those "What an excellent idea I've just had, Smithers" "But Mr. Burns, I--aw, yes, great idea..." moments. Except I didn't allow him the credit and then later when the bus that we so easily and quickly caught passed by my campus, he felt bad for making me waste time with such a dumb plan in the first place. And well he should have.

The bus took us right to Lewes, and we just had a little walk to get to some stuff happening. That stuff included torches (not flashlights), getting ready for and beginning parades (processions), and what people seemed to be calling "bangers" (not to be confused with the bangers that go with M*A*S*H. I assume).

We were sitting atop a wall that was less than five feet high on the side we boarded from, but which was significantly higher on the back side, as it dropped down into a little parking lot (car park) behind us. I was scared, but it was a good vantage point to see an intersection of two roads. On one side, people were pulling a bunch of stuff into the road, like this totem pole, to be part of the parade, and in the rest of the area, there were a lot of fire and becostumed (befancy dressed) people doing stuff and carrying things.

I don't remember what the significance of the obelisk is. I think I figured it out from a banner or Ed told me later, but now I'm not sure. Feel free to comment if you know. 

A Guy. He is very sad because he failed.

After a bit where we were got boring, so we wandered around (about?) and found High Street, which was the main blah blah. Soon there were more parades with more burning, more banners and standards (bandards), and some floats and floatlike items.

War:

This float recognizes a hospital's help in the celebrations. Note how even Death gets a spot on it, as an important role he plays.

Burning crosses do not have the same significance in England as they do in the States, FYI:

There were a lot of fiery wheelbarrows being wheeled to their respective bonfires. Ed said it was like they were saying, "Don't worry, folks, we've got plenty of stuff to burn." It amuses.

Obama float. There was some BP-related action going on here and there through the night.

Also, I never got a picture of any of them, but there were quite a lot of "No Popery" signs being paraded around, and the phrase befuddled me for a while, until I bothered to look at the root word, and also was close enough and could see through the smoke well enough to see derisive cartoons of the ol' pope. Popery is an awesome word.

Bonfires were scheduled to start going around 9:30, so after looking at the maps and getting kind of lost for a while, we eventually made it to one of the free sites, where we had some doughnuts and I fell trying to scale a small but muddy hill. BOOOO-urns. Anyway, the fire was massive, but there were no marshmallows. There was a fireworks display that was pretty cool right next to the fire.

When the fireworks ended, our sort-of plan was to try and get onto the last bus leaving from Lewes, but that plan was shot when we saw hundreds of millions of people waiting in line for what we were told by officials were only two city buses. The next plan was to walk back to my campus (or close enough to it to get a different bus), but after we'd been walking for like twenty minutes and had only barely gotten out of the whole scene, it started raining quite steadily, and it became not as feasible to walk for two hours with no umbrella and not-waterproof clothes. We tried calling a cab, but they were only picking up from specific points around the city, so we went back, trying and failing along the way to hail a cab. It's not really New York here. On the way back into city center (centre) there were still people marching and playing music in the street, and it was like midnight by then. They must have been tired.

Somehow our plan got muddled when we thought about going to the nearby train station to see if we could get a cab there, and saw what should have been a prohibitively long line waiting for trains that were scheduled to continue running until everyone was gone. We got into this what should have been a prohibitively long and which turned out to be even longer than we thought line, and waited amongst the most annoying drunken British (redundant, Ed said, as I recall) chicks ever. After a while I had to shut myself down so as to prevent a surge of American violence. We waited in that line for like, ever, man. And the whole damn line was outside in the rain. It took until the next evening for my jacket to dry, even after blow-drying it for a while in the afternoon. The trains ended up being free, though, to my surprise. I guess they figured a lack of chaos was preferable to tons of money.

So yeah, Bonfire Night, man. It's cool, although Ed said this massive affair is unusual. Maybe if I'm around next year I'll see something more traditional.