Monday 13th October

As a child, that is.  And perhaps it was because it heralded in the beginning of Winter, and that meant two great events; Bonfire Night and Christmas.  As kids we never got presents any other times bar Christmas and Birthdays, and even then not that many.  I have just come back from a visit to one of my grandchildren who is just four.  She has hundreds of toys, and a huge play room, with a Wendy House and oh so many toys it is quite bewildering.  Luckily I bought her a Barbie doll with a Fiat 500 car (for Barbie) and though she already had quite a few Barbies, she didn’t have that one.

Sadly she will never know the excitement of Bonfire Night, and the few weeks before it, practically all of October, going from door to door and collecting wood and junk to build the communal bonfire in the green opposite our house, and then making the guy itself, stuffing and painting old pillow cases and filling an old jacket and trousers with straw and tying the cuffs and trouser bottoms up, stuffing the thing into an old pram and hawking it around the streets asking “Penny for the Guy.”  We would then take these meagre few pennies and buy bangers and jumping jacks and maybe even a rocket or best of all a Catherine wheel.

Guy Fawkes night itself was a communal affair, whole families gathered round as the bonfire was lit and we all tossed our guys on to the flames.  And people were letting off fireworks all around you, mothers screaming as jumping jacks exploded around their feet; the few rockets whooshing off into the night sky and the peacocks-tail splendour of Catherine wheels spinning in the cold damp air.  We were allowed to hold sparklers and a few small fireworks (that would never be allowed now of course) and would stay up quite late as the bonfire subsided into embers.  In the morning we would run over and kick the damp black ashes trying to see a glimmer of red still glowing somewhere.

And now what do kids have – the utter commercialism of Halloween with shop-bought costumes and the awful “trick or treat” and ‘safe’ firework displays you have to pay to go and watch.  As Joni sang “Don’t it always seem as though – You don’t know what you got ‘till it’s gone.”