Guy Fawkes

**Tink** · 11th October 2009, 21:45

Does anyone actually do anything around this date... curious... anyone keen for a meet up on the 5th at the Village bar & Grill.... Patumahoe... ?

**Tink** · 11th October 2009, 21:46

oops forgot to mention .. its the classic car night... can we over run them...

**McJim** · 11th October 2009, 22:00

I never fully understood Guy Fawkes night. Are we celebrating that he attempted to blow up parliament or are we celebrating that he got caught?

If the latter I'm gonna give up Guy Fawkes night.

**Laxi** · 11th October 2009, 22:17

will there be planning for a guy fawks reinactment?

**James Deuce** · 11th October 2009, 22:19

Originally Posted by McJim

I never fully understood Guy Fawkes night. Are we celebrating that he attempted to blow up parliament or are we celebrating that he got caught?

If the latter I'm gonna give up Guy Fawkes night.

Got caught. Royalist Italian Mercenary. Got everything he deserved.

**Motu** · 11th October 2009, 22:41

Double Happy was the Classic Cracker...legal tender for 10 year olds.I wonder if they will make a revival version,y'know - half the strength,half as many in a packet,10 times the price.

**Blackshear** · 11th October 2009, 22:45

Originally Posted by Motu

Double Happy was the Classic Cracker...legal tender for 10 year olds.I wonder if they will make a revival version,y'know - half the strength,half as many in a packet,10 times the price.

I still have a few

By few I mean 1/3 of a 'magazine', if you will.

**SMOKEU** · 11th October 2009, 22:47

It's just an excuse to get drunk and do stupid shit with fireworks.

**rainman** · 11th October 2009, 22:57

Originally Posted by SMOKEU

It's just an excuse to get drunk and do stupid shit with fireworks.

It's got really boring these days. My family had a fine tradition of Blowing Shit Up on Guy Fawkes, none among us more so than my dad. But that was back when they'd sell firecrackers of the Seriously Explosive Persuasion down at the local dairy. To 10 year olds. Come to think of it, I used to go buy the makings of gunpowder from my local chemist when I wasn't much older than that, and not only at Guy Fawkes either... Made many an effective bomb

Still have all my fingers and eyes, too, so I can't be too stupid.

**cs363** · 11th October 2009, 23:18

Yes, there's better value to be had with a few dollars worth of oxy-acetylene than the fizzers that pass for fireworks these days....

**TOTO** · 11th October 2009, 23:27

when is the Guy Fawkes thingy ?

**Swoop** · 12th October 2009, 08:25

Originally Posted by rainman

Still have all my fingers and eyes, too, so I can't be too stupid.

This is precisely where Mr Darwin could do his "good work(tm)" on society.
Thank you, once again, PC brigade.

**Skyryder** · 12th October 2009, 10:01

Originally Posted by McJim

I never fully understood Guy Fawkes night. Are we celebrating that he attempted to blow up parliament or are we celebrating that he got caught?

If the latter I'm gonna give up Guy Fawkes night.

I think the celebration is for the fact that he got caught. He was the bad guy.

from Wiki. In popular culture
Anarchist poster from the mid-20th century

In 18th-century England, it became a tradition for children to display a grotesque effigy of Fawkes, termed a "guy", as part of the Bonfire Night celebration.[19] As part of the tradition, they will often stand on streetcorners begging for "a penny for the guy".[20] The "guy" would be burned on a bonfire at the end of the evening. As a consequence, "guy" came to mean a man of odd appearance. Subsequently, in American English, "guy" lost any pejorative connotation, becoming a simple reference for any man.[5]

John Lennon recalled the Gunpowder plot at the end of the song Remember with the reference to "No, no, remember, remember the fifth of November"[21]. This lyric, which closes the song on the 1970 Plastic Ono Band LP, is followed by a recording of an explosion.

Fawkes was ranked 30th in the 2002 list of the 100 Greatest Britons, sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public.[22] He was also included in a list of the 50 greatest people from Yorkshire.[23] The Guy Fawkes River and thus Guy Fawkes River National Park in northern New South Wales, Australia were named after Fawkes by explorer John Oxley, who, like Fawkes, was from North Yorkshire. In the Galápagos Islands a collection of two crescent-shaped islands and two small rocks northwest of Santa Cruz Island, are called Isla Guy Fawkes.[24]

William Harrison Ainsworth's 1841 historical romance Guy Fawkes; or, The Gunpowder Treason, portrays Fawkes, and Catholic recusancy in general, in a sympathetic light and was one of the first accounts to challenge the official depiction of the plot.[25]

Skyryder