When Guy Fawkes wore my old dressing gown

JOURNAL ENTRY

8^th November, Wednesday.

“Look down for the healing.
A reluctant dawn this morning,
South wind plays with stray raindrops
And birch leaves.
Scars of grey paving slabs lined with green.
Willowherb, spurge, dandelion.
Green healing the grey.
Always there's the healing.
Look to the healing
Beneath your feet.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

It's a crystalline still night, star-bright. The water is mirror flat. There's an old moon waiting below the horizon, but the night will be far gone and a lot colder before she makes her entrance. These days she seems to prefer to sail across lighter skies.

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into a cold November night to you wherever you are.

Thank you for coming. It is so good to see you. Why not come inside for a little while. Tonight is the type of night to be inside beside a warm fire with a hot drink. The stove is on and the kettle is boiling. Let me take your coat and welcome aboard. 

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

Autumn days. Even if the vegetation is dying back and the hedgerows are beginning to take on a more threadbare appearance, there's still a lot of green around here. The canal side trees, the oaks, the ash, the alder, although beginning to show the first signs of yellowing, are still predominately green. It's only when we break away from this little local microclimate that the full range of autumnal tree colours can be seen. Driving to work, or the other day driving into Banbury, I've been struck by the colours.

The kingfisher has been a regular visitor. Quite often he or she flits and darts in front of us as we make our way to and from the boat in that slightly looping flight they have. I've not seen so much of the heron here so far. One always used to fish from a bay on the offside bank, but this season I have not seen it yet. The cormorant has also not been around much. I see one or two flying overhead, but so far they're not stopping.

Of course, the mallards are plentiful and a constant source of interest and delight. The more time I spend with them the more convinced I am that they're one of the most misunderstood species of bird. The swan pair are also still regular visitors. The cob (the male) nearly always replies to my greeting snort. Sometimes initiating the contact call. The female (pen) is not so vocal and still tends to be more suspicious or less tolerant of my presence. This is particularly the case now that I usually have Maggie in tow! Initially, Maggie almost instinctively gave them a wide birth. However, she's recently become much more inquisitive about them and would push the boundaries if I let her - which I don't!

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

WHEN GUY FAWKES WORE MY OLD DRESSING GOWN

November is a capricious month; a month of seasons that can both beguile and dispirit. In fact, Ruth Binney begins her section on November with…

[READING]

Miles Hadfield adds…

 [READING]

We are only a little way in, and we’ve had a lot of that changeability.

It has just been as John Clare describes it in his chapter on November from his poem on the year: The Shepherd’s Calendar.

“Thus wears the month along, in checker'd moods,
Sunshine and shadows, tempests loud, and calms;
One hour dies silent o'er the sleepy woods,
The next wakes loud with unexpected storms;”

We go to sleep with one type of weather to awaken to another. But, at least, the days have a more autumnal – Novemberish even – feel to them. Each morning glistens with moisture and the silvery light upon green. Low mists rise from field and water as a platinum sun rises into a sky of chalk dust to chase the lingering darkness of night under gap-toothed hedges. The wind has shifted to the northern quarter, its rawness has got me to hunt out my hat and gloves. For the first time this autumn, my face has tingled when I have climbed back down inside the boat and my fingers have ached with fire. That is not to say that it has been particularly cold – we haven’t lately had any frosts (although the forecasters are promising them very soon). It’s just been really damp. That permeating kind of damp chill that skulks around your feet and – if allowed – rises capillary-like up body and boat regardless. A sort of chilliness that slowly tries to get into your bones. The sun, when it has been out, has been warm, but in the shadows or when it goes behind a cloud, there is the gentle reminder that summer has passed.

November as a month seems to have a character all of its own. It’s a strange month that, for me, brings with it a shimmering whisper of excitement and the unfamiliar; something hunched and expectant about it. It might be the changes to the landscape – the way the towpath and lanes, hedges and wood thickets alter shape and colour – tangled, sharp, angles and sky take the place of soft flowing curves. Greeting the dark earlier and earlier, the silvery light of short days. The first tastes of the coming winter are still a novelty. Something different. No, that’s not quite right, yes, it might be different, but a familiar difference. Becoming reacquainted with something almost forgotten. Finding one of your old childhood books in a second-hand bookshop, or seeing a toy of yours in a museum. That special sensory palette of autumn, the scent of damp air, and wet leaf mulch. Instantly recognisable and familiar and yet in the instant of recognising the realisation that you had forgotten them. I’m experiencing that a lot lately.

But I think that this sense of expectancy is more than just that. It may be that it is still informed by the place November held in my childhood calendar. Coming straight on the back of the, albeit low-key, drama of Halloween, with the candle-lit smile of our swede head guttering and smoking sooty on the gate post, we then have Guy Fawkes night. ‘Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot.’ What is there for a young boy not to like about Guy Fawkes night? The darkness, the coaxing of torch batteries into dim and sputtering light.
“Roll ‘em between your hands a bit to warm them up.”
“No, it’s terminals. Give the torch a whack.”
“No, just turn it off, cut to a hundred, and turn it back on really quick.”

We were past-masters at squeezing the last drops of life out of batteries. The little blue rectangular PP3 – neat and contained. Their little boxy packages spoke to me of the future. They also had the advantage of both terminals being situated close together and so when you stuck your tongue on them you could taste electricity. Or there were also the older twin celled EverReady 800s for bicycle lamps and bigger torches. They were made of cardboard which would form a frost of crystals and eventually go soggy and leak battery acid over your fingers. I was about to tell you what that tasted like, but think I won't. Even I can detect a worrying pattern forming here!!

Then there were the cardboard firework boxes decorated with flashes and sky rocketing bangs that smelt of gunpowder and – I assumed treason, and for all I knew, Guy Fawkes himself! It was wonderful! These were the days before organised public firework displays. Every family, or nearly every family, had their own little firework party in their garden. For a week or two beforehand the newsagents’ windows of Haywoods and Montagues were decorated with coloured firework posters and papier-mâché Guy Fawkes masks that smelt of egg boxes and the inside of Jamboree packet. We never went in for ‘Penny for the guy’, but it was an occasion, nonetheless. There’s an old photograph that Sis took of me proudly sitting on the garden step beside our very own Guy. We made him out of old pairs of Mum's stockings and his body was my cast-off dressing-gown; maroon with a corded belt and pockets that were forever bulging with stuff I might need. He’s also wearing a pair of my old ‘Start-Rite’ sandals and the papier mâché Guy Fawkes mask. He is ready for the fire. I am sitting beside him, smiling, in my school uniform with my arm around his shoulders holding him up. Behind us the detritus of leaves clutters the lawn.   

The day Mum bought our box - Standard Fireworks, sometimes Brocks. There was another brand, but I can’t remember it now - we would pour through its contents with the eye of experts. Catherine wheels, Roman Candles, Volcanos – I remember that one was named Mount Vesuvius. It was a long time until I realised that there really was a Mount Vesuvius. Sky rockets on lolly pop sticks that you launched from milk bottles. We’d pick up each in turn. Feeling their weight in the palms of our hand. The instructions were closely read, their descriptions read with a healthy dose of scepticism. After all we were veterans. With each handling, the little heap of greyish gunpowder dust that would form in the corner of the box. We knew, when at the end of our display, Dad threw the box onto the fire, it would crackle and snap, creating coloured tongues of flame and sparks. A fitting end to the fireworks.

For some reason, I had the impression that sky rockets were the only real fireworks. As much as I liked the billows of hissing, whistling, spark-spitting volcanoes that turned the garden purple and pink and then such a bright white you had to look away. Or the sparklers that spelt our names all wonky in the air. They there to create the right atmosphere, only fillers – the warm up acts – to the real thing; the rockets – that whizzed and shrieked up into the smoky sky on trails of gold.      

Before we had our display, Wendy and I would scamper upstairs and watch from the big bay-window in Mum and Dad’s bedroom, to watch the lighting of scattered bonfires in the gardens on the opposite side of the valley. And if we were lucky, we’d spot the flaring tracery of a rocket. I am not sure that I would have agreed with it at the time, but looking back those were my happiest fireworks night memories. Watching the tiny blossoms of bonfires burst into life across the hill opposite us. Sometimes a small patch of coloured light would flash and glow. After a while the rockets would launch scattering wisteria like trails of light across the sky. “There!” “Over there! Did you see it?” “Oh, another one!” 

The firework display itself was a dazzling spectacle of light and gunpowdery smoke. We stood at the top of the garden while the familiar prosaic little rock garden was transformed by crackles of colour and sparks. We didn't always make a Guy for the bonfire. When we did he was ceremoniously placed on the top. It was always with rather uncertain, ambiguous feelings that we did this and saw him disappear in flame and smoke. Most years, I recall, the bonfire was enough. It served as the warm heart of the night. It cast our shadows writhing across the fence panels. And all around the sky flared and popped to unseen and unheard ‘aaahs’ and ‘ooooohs’. There was always jeopardy there too. The firework whose fuse went out – or was it really out? Sis and I knew our firework code well. We’d heard it at school, and with our very own eyes, we had read the cheaply printed instructions that came with each box. NEVER RETURN TO A LIT FIREWORK it stated in bold block capitals. But was it lit? And if it was, how did we know that it was still lit? It was agonising staring at the stubborn little cardboard tube that flashed and wavered in our dim torchlight. Dad had the taper – sometime a piece of wick, sometimes a thin strip of bamboo type wood that slowly smouldered and burned. Dad also had his cigarette lighter. If ever there was anyone up to the job of dealing with uncertain fireworks it was Dad. But we had still to learn that. With toes curled and breath held we watched wracked in the agonies of anticipation as Dad walked over to it, bent down, Argh, no – fire explosions, carnage! With a quick flick of his lighter he relit the fuse. We could breathe easily again.   

All that was left was to retrieve our baked potatoes, wrapped in foil, from the glowing edge of the fire. The skins, turned into teeth-splintering charcoal, they were hurried by Mum into the oven ‘to finish off’. Sometimes there was soup too. Sis sometimes made cheese straws. Cheese straws were her speciality. I would suppose they would be called her ‘signature dish’ today. At school she had Domestic Science (which made me think of test-tubes and flowing white lab coats). She impressed us all for her first lesson. Having been asked to take in to school two slices of bread and a banana, she came home brandishing a banana sandwich for us all to taste. One bonfire night, I made Daleks out of sponge, marshmallows, three sweet cigarettes (with the red tips neatly bitten off – chef’s perks) and butter icing with chocolate buttons pushed into them. They were so sweet they were well-nigh look inedible. Once when I made them for a visit from an aunt and uncle, I stored them under my bed for safekeeping. However, Tilly, our rotund black Labrador, found them and polished off the lot.

The morning following fireworks, we’d go around the garden to inspect the remnants of the night before. The milk bottles were retrieved all blackened with soot and stardust, to be washed and put out for the milkman – we also collected the used firework cartridges and cartons – damp with dew and smelling funnily of egg. Sometimes we’d find gold-dust. A rocket – large and extravagant – that had fallen from the skies of someone else’s display.

The following morning always seemed to smell thick with damp and firework’s gunpowder. I can often still smell it on mornings like those we have been having. Mornings that glisten with moisture and silvery light upon the green. When the grass is bent low with dew and there is a haze of mist in the air. Smells like fireworks night, I say. And once more around me, I’d see the smoky milk bottles and the charred rocket cartridges still attached to their wooden sticks. And a little lad in shorts and school tie, with his arm around a guy wearing his old dressing gown looks up at me and wonders who I might possibly be, before continuing his search for sulphur-scented Roman candles.  

SIGNING OFF

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG