Bonfire Night

It doesn't seem right to call November 5th Guy Fawkes Night any more, as the Stuart Popish plotter hardly plays any role in the Autumnal festivities nowadays. I talked about the customs of the season with the ATC on Tuesday, and the mid-teenagers could only dimly remember having heard of the days when children would trail badly-constructed effigies of Guy Fawkes around their local streets asking for 'a penny for the Guy'. Kids don't really need other people's pennies that much now, and even if they do that's not a common way of procuring them. 

Ms Formerly Aldgate and I went to a smallish bonfire and firework display last year; this time, we made it (just) to Hamshott, a nearby village where we eschewed the now-customary elements of torchlit procession and dreadful burgers from stalls along the edge of the field, but enjoyed the fireworks themselves. Hamshott isn't very big, but there were three-to-four thousand people present; I wonder whether this is because people's expectations of fireworks and bonfires have now escalated and only fairly large-scale celebrations can actually match up, rather than the various less overwhelming but more numerous events I remember from forty years ago.