2 weeks Ago By Susan Morrison
Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Gone are the days when his stunt double was hauled around the streets before his blazing finale. It’s been years since I’ve seen kids haul about a stuffed suit on a set of wheels, mugging passers-by looking for a "penny for the guy”.
Well, things change, I guess. Advertisement Advertisement For one thing, who walks about with a penny in their pocket now, or any cash at all? Spare change has gone the way of Woolworths Pick ‘n’ Mix. Mind you, I’m surprised kids haven’t just opened a bank account, switched to cashless and sourced those little “tap and pay” gizmos.
I miss Guy, even though at his interrogation he announced he had intended to “blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains”. Well, you can’t please everyone, that’s what I say. But the Fifth of November, all gunpowder, treason and plot, was Fawkes’s big night.
Not that I imagine this was any sort of comfort on the scaffold as he was hung, drawn and quartered. Advertisement Advertisement He did manage to avoid the really nasty stuff, like having his bits cut off and his entrails drawn out, by falling off the gibbet and breaking his own neck. This doesn’t seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of the audience, however, since the resourceful executioner carried on regardless.
The show must go on, after all. And so since 1605 we’ve been stuffing straw into recycled clothes, lighting bonfires and popping off safe amounts of gunpowder in fireworks and writing rude words in the air by swirling sparklers about. Now Guy is largely gone, and so, mysteriously, are the sparklers.
Those little flat packs seem to have vanished from the shelves. Perhaps they were considered dangerous, and so they have been removed. Advertisement Advertisement If, however, you want to buy the sort of ordinance that was once levelled at castle battlements, not a problem.
The domestic fireworks of previous years had modest ambitions compared to the battlezone behemoths in play today. All we wanted to do was light up the sky with standard fireworks. Now they can be used to control entire sections of a city and terrorise the streets.
The Republic of Leith is far from the chaos of Niddrie Mains Road, but we had constant flashes and whizzbangs for days around us. Just a tip for the lighters of today’s rockets. Generally speaking, fireworks are supposed to go upwards in a blaze of glory.
They can be fun that way, and everyone gets to see them. If you set them off to streak along the street, they are pretty darned scary. The only people having fun is, well, you, and your idea of fun is pretty horrible.
Fireworks have become a sort of “hobby” weapon. They’re easy to get, easy to light and easy to aim at buses, cars and the emergency services. Advertisement Advertisement In days gone by, no Guy Fawkes Night was complete without a short public announcement film.
A concerned fireman would warn kids to be careful around the rockets, Roman candles and Catherine Wheels. Oddly, none of those tips was "do not launch fireworks at firefighters”. When the lives and safety of frontline emergency service workers are endangered, it’s time to take the toys from the boys.
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