Ut oh.
It is never a happy thing to capture the attention of the Daily Mail.
The effigy burned at the bonfire every year — the Guy, as it were — is usually a satirical portrait of one of that year’s numero uno pains-in-the-ass. Burning the figure is a two-fingers-up to the pope or the prime minister or whoever got on local society’s collective tits that year. Rye goes one further and generally starts the bonfire by blowing up the guy with a grand, window-rattling boom.
This year, Rye Bonfire Society decided to do something else. Instead of an effigy, they made a large three-poppy display on the front of the bonfire, in commemoration of the WWI centenary. They didn’t blow it up, they burned it in what I imagine they thought of as a sort of grand and honorable Viking funeral.
Unfortunately, burning, snatching, crumpling and otherwise disrespecting poppies has become the Brit equivalent of flag burning, so the display hit some people wrong. They — the organizers — should have seen the likelihood it would be so.
Still, I am an unfan of the Mail, a shit-stirring rag. It’s pretty lousy to make a big deal of this; Rye is the last place that would deliberately disrespect the Great War. I’d hate to see ‘our side’ become as tetchy as the opposition about unintended slights.
November 12, 2014 — 9:19 pm
Comments: 9
Awesome!
We did go to the bonfire in Rye on Saturday. We usually watch the fireworks from a ways down the road to avoid the crush of traffic, so this was my first (second?) time seeing the procession through the town.
It was awesome! Rye is quite small and hilly, with ancient buildings and little twisty cobbled roads. The parade winds through the town twice before ending in a field by the river for bonfire and fireworks.
It’s all drums and fire and spooky costumes. So much noise. So much fire. I’m amazed nobody goes up like a Christmas tree — all the crews are carrying proper torches, the kind with oily rags on sticks. They throw them down in the road when they’re spent and light new ones, and men with loud rattly metal carts come last, picking up the torches and making bonfires in the carts. Tons of pyrotechnics they let off in the town as they wind through.
Oh, and THIS GUY. The dragon. I was unprepared for him. His head turns side to side, fire shoots out his nostrils, he opens his mouth with a hiss and more fire comes out his mouth. Beautifully done. I’m in love. I circled back around to get video of him, but they dropped him off before the final lap, so no good pictures.
And then the bonfire and the fireworks and it rained like a bastard and we got soaked walking to the car. The end.
November 10, 2014 — 9:47 pm
Comments: 15
I has a rocket!
I only bought the one because we were invited over to the neighbors’ for a Fourth of July cookout, and I didn’t think their livestock would appreciate fireworks.
We snuck home full of wine and burgers and let it off in the garden. It…wasn’t very good.
I paid £10 for this thing and it just went whizz-bang-fountain. For that kind of money, I thought sure it would spell out “God Bless America” and hum a few bars of Stars and Stripes Forever.
The best part was where we jammed the firing tube thingie into the soil, and Jack immediately rushed over and took a crap. Any time you disturb earth, Jack’ll plant one in it, quite uninhibitedly. We had to wait for him to fuss over his turd coverings before we could light the fuse. I didn’t want to remember this as The Day I Set Fire To The Cat.
Hope you had a jolly 4th!
July 4, 2014 — 10:34 pm
Comments: 20
Happy Walpurgis Night!
It is the 30th of April, the night before the Feast of Walpurga, AKA Walpurgisnacht. Walpurga was an 8th C English missionary to Germany, and that’s enough about her, because it’s mere coincidence that she was canonized on the 1st of May.
Walpurgis Night is the Germanic version of Beltane or May Day. It’s halfway between Spring equinox and Midsummer. A remnant of pagan “welcome Spring!” celebrations. But with witches and bonfires.
I burned some shit in the garden tonight, but for the comfort and safety of my neighbors, I kept my blouse on.
April 30, 2014 — 9:28 pm
Comments: 8
George and Abraham, sittin’ in a tree…
When I did that “George Washington’s dentures” post last week, I totally forgot we celebrate the big guy’s birthday today.
This bit of high Victorian kitsch is called “The Apotheosis.” Gosh, our great grandparents were weird, weren’t they?
I read a lot of hundred year old books. This is partly because I like them and more than partly because I’m too cheap to pay for Kindle books that are still in copyright. Anyway, I always say: if you want to understand a particular time period, don’t read books about the era, read books from the era. And, frankly, a hundred years is about as far as you can go back before the syntax gets all scratchy and hard. Well, two hundred, maybe.
Anyway, I can’t help being struck by how unimaginable they would find our times. Not technologically — some of them did a pretty good job guessing where science might take us (in fact, if anything, they were overly optimistic) — but socially, ye gods. How everything has changed.
Then the next exercise is to try to imagine what it is about our times that our grandchildren will find amazing, silly or obviously flat wrong. We can’t, of course. We’re too much of our own time to see it. It’s like trying to stick your elbow in your ear.
What the science fiction guys do is extrapolate trends out in a straight line. But that’s not how social history works. Not consistently, anyway. Some things trend and some things swing back and forth and we’re lousy at guessing which will do what.
And then there’s Bigfoot. It’s only since I’ve moved over here I’ve come to a sense of how much the two World Wars smashed up the place. The society, I mean — they recovered from the property damage pretty quickly. I don’t think the Black Death rattled people the way the 20th Century did, in total.
Speaking of Yersinia pestis — does anybody else have that itchy feeling that we are way, way overdue for that next plague or comet or rain of frogs?
February 17, 2014 — 11:16 pm
Comments: 19
Good weekend
Long time readers may remember that this is our wedding annniversary. It is, in fact, our fifth anniversary. I will leave it to you to Google what you get on your fifth anniversary.
G’night, folks!
February 14, 2014 — 10:40 pm
Comments: 27
Well, 2014 might be more interesting than I thought…
I’ve seen this posted around the tubes the last few days and assumed it was fake. Nope. BBC really did fail this large.
Can’t wait for the Year of the Skank.
February 3, 2014 — 11:51 pm
Comments: 16
Happy Year of the Horse!
It reads better in the original uncut color version, but I had to mash it to fit in my format. Weazels stealz.
Actually, Chinese New Year is tomorrow, but we all know what we’ll be doing tomorrow here at Mustelid Central. 6pm WBT. Dead Pool Round 59!
January 30, 2014 — 11:16 pm
Comments: 11
Happy MILK day!
Oh, man, I love a glass of sweet, cold whole milk. It’s those milk-drinking Viking genes.
This is one of my happiest indulgences. All of the major supermarkets carry a premium brand of Jersey or Guernsey whole milk. Channel Island milk, as I’m sure you know, has more of everything that makes milk awesome. It’s golden yellow with butterfat!
Butterfat. God, that word.
It’s the breed of cow, so they say, rather than the conditions that makes Jersey or Guernsey milk, but I like the idea mine comes from little storm-lashed islands off the coast.
When I was a lass, our family cow was a Jersey, and she gave fine, sweet milk. We usually let her go dry after her calves weaned, but when we did milk her, it was awkward to talk about it:
her name was Mother.
January 21, 2014 — 12:36 am
Comments: 20
To all those we leave behind in 2013
Sorry for late. I couldn’t get my blog to load earlier and we celebrated midnight with neighbors.
Happy New Year, folks. Many thanks for hanging out here with us; it means an awful lot. I can’t think how homesick I’d be without you.
Let’s hope 2014 is…better. We can hope for better, right? Better isn’t greedy, is it?
January 1, 2014 — 1:01 am
Comments: 22