Guy sucks

Well here we are in October and its very nearly Guy Fawkes night again, I think it must be because everywhere you go in the area that I live in, people are being accosted by groups of kids demanding a penny for the guy. By penny they mean three to five quid and by Guy they mean beer and fags. That and the fact that fireworks have been going off morning, noon and night is a sure sign that very soon people will be phoning the fire brigade to please come and put their cars out. Or at the very least having to visit motor factors to buy the overpriced body repair kit that will enable them to smooth out the bumps in the roof of cars that have had rockets land on them.

These days rockets are not the small things we used to buy as kids that went whoosh and then dissapered in a shower of sparks, no, no, these days rockets are huge great big things that even N.A.S.A. would be proud of. I wouldn’t mind kids asking for a penny for the guy if they had made some kind of effort, but usually what they call a guy is a just black plastic bag shoved under their arm.

When my brother and I were kids we used to get an old pair of overhauls from my Dad, sew the ends of the arms and legs up, then stuff them with newspaper. The same went for a pair of gloves that were pinned to the sleeves and likewise a pair of socks stuffed to the shape of feet and pinned to the legs. The head was usually made from an old cushion with a grisly mask attached and one year my Mum even made a chimney pot hat with a wide brim for Mr Fawkes. The last few days before the 5th we were allowed to stand outside Webs newsagents opposite the Lake Hotel for a couple of hours after tea and beseech passers bye for a penny for the guy, which really meant a penny.

Sometimes we got lucky and were given a threepenny bit. The best time was always a Friday night when people would be coming home from work with their wages, they were always more generous then and once a sixpence was thrown into our moneybox. Our Dad would come to pick us up and take us home, where we would add the coppers to the money we had collected the night before. Those last few days before bonfire night were a time of mounting excitement, because the more money we collected the better was our fireworks display. Dad would always put on a grim face and tell us that he couldn’t afford to buy fireworks that year. But we knew that on the day we went to Webs newsagents to buy them with the money we had collected, Dad would pay for a big box he had ordered weeks before.

There not fireworks anymore, its just semtex in a brightly coloured box, cheap imports from Asia have killed firework manufacturers in the UK, and now they are just explosives with names like snow storm, and vesuvious. It’s a strange world where if you do throw these beggars a few quid for the minuscule effort they have put into the black plastic bag that masquerades as a guy. They will (if they don’t spend your cash on Lager and cigarettes) torment you for weeks before, and weeks after bonfire night. And all paid for by your effort.