Open Writing

In Johannesburg, South Africa, many thousands of miles south of the site of the original plot in 1605 to blow up the British Houses of Parliament, many people still celebrate Guy Fawkes night with firework displays, loud bangs and hisses and starbursts lighting dark blue, starlit skies.

When I was a child, fireworks could be purchased from the local toy shop, and a display given in our own front garden. I remember kneeling on the couch at the lounge window, looking out from my place of safety at the sizzling, spinning, multicoloured Catherine wheels that Dad attached to the fence and gazing up in awe as he sent beautiful, sparkling rockets, fizzing and hissing as they soared into the sky, then plummeted back to land, burnt-out, on the tiny pocket-handkerchief lawn.

Ninny that I was, I’d shriek and jump and run as Dad and my brother, Roger, gleefully lit strings of jumping-jacks that popped and jumped after me on the slate-paved veranda, and rush to my bedroom and hide my head under layers of pillows when they set off the ‘big bangs’. Later, I was soothed and given a sparkler to hold and weave coloured writing in the air as the fire sparkled and spat its way down the gun-powder-covered wire.

It was great fun, and usually over in about an hour; other people in the suburb celebrated late into the evening. We heard loud ’bangs’ and spied an occasional rocket as it seared its way across the stars.

Sadly, I never saw a Guy, or a bonfire, but my eighty-nine-year-old mother wistfully said that it was such fun when she was little, “we always had a bonfire!”

This year, it was raining on Guy Fawkes evening, and we didn’t hear any explosions. Leon and I sat in the study, watching a movie on DVD; ‘V for Vendetta’. This movie is set, with its tongue firmly in its cheek, in an England of the future where a gunpowder plot, carried out on the fifth of November seems a jolly good idea.

After the movie, I went to the window and parted the curtains. The rain had stopped, and I saw:

Towering cloud,
silver-rimmed and brightening
through picture-puzzling tree.
And then, the moon
Born from that silver rim,
Sailed high
On the bright, midnight sky.

It is now illegal in South Africa for individuals to purchase fireworks or give displays in their own gardens. This doesn’t stop people from acquiring them illegally and having private firework parties. There is a huge outcry each year against the loud ‘bangs’ that are set off with any firework other than gentle ‘sparklers’: the noise distresses pets and timid children such as I used to be. The outcry doesn’t stop the explosions, which seem to get louder every year and are attached to the most beautiful displays.

Of course, fireworks are not limited to the fifth of November. About a month earlier, many people celebrate Diwali with the aid of loud fireworks. New Year seems a good time for noise and sparklers too.

While we acknowledge that the noise of fireworks exploding can be distressing to many pets and to sensitive people, if properly organised, firework displays can be a source of joy and delight. Surely, if precautions by pet-owners are taken to supervise and help their animals with many of the ‘rescue’ remedies available, or proper training by ‘pet behaviourists’, these problems can be avoided. Sensitive children can be spoken to, again, supervised and accompanied, and their enjoyment of functions and commemorating Guy Fawkes and celebrating Diwali and New Year in time-honoured fashion can be enhanced.

With the wish that there should never be reason for “gunpowder, treason and plot”, I leave you all, until next time… “Here Comes Treble!”

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By Isabel Bradley