Procrastination + Bonfire Night

So as you can probably tell, I avoided my reading for like an hour and a half and fiddled with adjustments to the blog template here. If anything breaks or gets wonky, let me know, its still a work in progress.

November 5th is Bonfire Night (also known as Guy Fawkes Day) in the UK. Today we celebrate that wondrous man who absolutely failed in his plot to blow up Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The plot's goal was to literally blow up the houses of Parliament while the Protestant nobility (and the Catholic nobility- whoops) were inside as a means of ending the Protestant rule of King James and to end the discrimination against Catholics in England at the time. The plot was foiled when Fawkes was discovered setting up the explosives after officials received an anonymous warning letter. On Bonfire Night, bonfires are lit and effigies of Guy are burned in a tradition dating all the way back to 1605, and fireworks displays go off in a tradition going back all the way to whenever fireworks became the standard means of public celebration. Sounds like my kind of day, right? Well it would be if York, the BIRTHPLACE of Guy Fawkes mind you, did anything for it. They decided a few years back to scrap their Bonfire Night festivities because it was too cost prohibitive to meet all the safety regulations put in place in recent years by various government agencies.

So I have no idea what I'll be doing tonight. Apparently there is a small bonfire in Heslington, the villiage near the main York campus. I'm not sure if fireworks displays from any other cities will be visible or not. Apparently the York Tourism Board is equally disgusted with the lack of festivities, because lots of potential tourists contact them about planning a visit around Bonfire Night but then bail when they hear we don't do anything.

Anyway, the Guy Fawkes legacy lives on. In 2002, he was voted #30 in the list of the 100 Greatest Britons (which is kind of ironic actually, seeing as he a) attempted to bring down the government and b) failed at it) and he has been immortalized in the masks and poem (re)popularized by the movie V for Vendetta.

Remember, remember the fifth of November,

The gunpowder treason and plot,

I know of no reason

Why the gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.