BONFIRE NIGHT 2003
Occasionally from the p.a. system at the priory the anachronistic and, (if not originally, certainly now generally felt to be), jingoistic music of Elgar, (born 1857, Worcester), Holst, (born 1874, Cheltenham), etc. were blown down to us like a re-run of The Last Night of the Proms. And did I imagine that I heard a tenuous North of England connection, (via the Lancaster Bomber to Eric Coates' Dambusters' March as well)?
Though nowadays our nation still has certain qualities of which it is rightly less ashamed than other nations, (are, or should be), I was reminded that much of "Britannia" once believed that it really could and really should feel really proud of many of its all too often very exploitative achievements.
| Inevitably a mad conductor, (fat controller or sorcerer's apprentice), finally swept his punctuating baton across the sky to signal that a good thing had come to an end. |
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And a wobbly old full moon too. |
After the display we went back and hung around the bonfire again. It wasn't a cold evening, but we'd brought a hot drink in a flask and....., Hey, "God bless Mr. Thermos", (a Scotsman). Our drink was made from mulled spices with whisky added and it was very close to unpleasant, (but I wasn't going to carry it home again and couldn't bring myself to throw it away). At the fireside a chap was most skillfully, and in an infectiously funky way, bap-booming on his knees-clasped bongo and making us just sort-of move and sway a bit. The Quay crowd slowly diminished from the many hundreds who'd been around when we first arrived. Thousands more were slowly evacuating the Priory and Castle grounds. |
The fire burnt down, of course, (because that's what they do), and some unsupervised, (and selfishly stupid), young teenage boys and girls moved in under the safety rope and started to throw on odd bits of leftover wood, and then bottles. A glass bottle sat in the hot embers opposite us and it seemed a good idea to be somewhere else.
The bongo man became more interested in the dark contents of his plastic pint glass and the second opus didn't compare too well with his first.
A sky anenome?
Oooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhh!!!!!!!, Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!
And it's very hard not to, (more especially when there's no reason not to).
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Higher than the moon they went. |
Come on, me old flower......... |
Perhaps it was 3/4 of an hour after the display had finished that we started to walk home along the Quay, passing the crawling, fume-pumping queues of out-of-towners, (or those who'd forgotten to walk), past the moonlit, proud and fabulous two-fingered Millennium Bridge and on past our small city's multi-ethnic and crowded takeaways.
Arriving home we spun open the draught on the sitting room woodstove. It quickly warmed the room and much of the rest of the house.
Later that night there was a partial eclipse of the moon. It would doubtless have been a very big deal to the ancient pagan dudes.
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It's now 15 November and fireworks are still, though less frequently, rattling around the city. Over-legislated as we already are, I do think the damned things should only be allowed between Bonfire Night and the nearest Saturday and even then to be in the possession of only an authorised few.
The Wicker Dude.
| All photographs (handheld) by the Wicker Dude too. |
Addendum Nonsensicum:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire.
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green & pleasant Land.
[(Words: from Milton, Prelude by William Blake, c.1804.
Music: “Jerusalem,” by Charles Hubert Hastings Parry in 1916,
(whose father was the "squire" of Highnam Court, Gloucestershire
and built the second school which this web weaver attended. By Jingo!)].
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