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Guy Fawkes

Bonfire Night at a village in north Northumberland in the 1950s

HACKING AT WHIN BUSHES WITH AN AXE more suitable for kindling is hard work for a ten-year-old. The blade more often than not bounces off the wiry branches toughened by north winds sweeping across the Cheviot hills. We drag them up to the summit of Glanton hill, along with any old timber, furniture, worn out mattresses - anything we can lay our hands on as we scrounge round the village during the weeks before.

All of us, young kids and teenagers, pile it high with always an effigy of Guy Fawkes strapped to a chair, his face painted in gaudy colours and dressed up in our dad’s old clothes, a pointed hat stuck on his head. Defiantly his eyes stare out at us as the flames engulf him.

Cheers as he burns: first his clothes scorch, then his innards of straw and screwed-up newspaper which chars red before disintegrating. Without warning he topples awkwardly into the hissing crackle, where the intensity of fire consumes all before it at its epi-centre, and from which flames flick and lash silently in their momentary existence, thrusting upwards, amidst molten sparks and swirling smoke, into the blackness of night where the stars remain still in their silent permanency.

Away from the fire the cold air of early winter permeates the glow of fire warmth, a glance at the distant village - only a few isolated specks of light is evidence of its existence. Turning back to the bonfire, black silhouettes of figures are transfixed by the spectacle as the grey smoke-drift fades into the blackness of the northern sky.

Potatoes are flung into the embers and raked out with any old stick, their skins charred to charcoal, now broken open by cold eager fingers surprised by the immediate heat; teeth sink into the succulent flesh, and if you are lucky, flavoursome with a fair tinge of smoke and burnt! Nothing like it! Lips wiped by a sweep of the sleeve, likewise the fingers.

And the occasional adult, and I can never remember who, as most of us were kids with teenage brothers and sisters, who pulls out home-made toffee, ginger bread and parkin. My dad likes his ginger bread claggy, and so do I.

Back we go to the village. Fireworks set off randomly, with no thought of order, even though there were more mams and dads about. One year there was a battle across the main street: banger touch papers lit to a steady glow and flung at the opposition like hand grenades; a jumping jack spits and cracks amidst a clutch of girls who scream in mock terror, then turn their scolding tongues on the boys and lapse into embarrassed giggles.

Two of us sneak away up the street to thrust a banger through Ben Turnbull’s letterbox, an odd-jobber on local farms who lives alone, a loner who rarely speaks, except for a mumbled greeting to his neighbour. I feel that pang of guilt still, these fifty years later at this victimisation. But there was much of that in the 17th century cauldron of political and religious intrigue. When I learnt about this? Not until now.