The lads in our street would make a Guy out of old sacks stuffed with rags.
We’d scrounge old clothes to dress him in then tote him around the streets on a go-cart (homemade from orange boxes, pram wheels and bits of string) to raise money for buying fireworks.
Back home, our dads would save offcuts from their workshops and add them to the growing mound of garden rubbish in the worst garden in the street, that is the one where a bonfire could do little to make things worse.
Old carpets and broken furniture, rotten planks, old fence posts and the like would add to the small mountain that would become our bonfire.
At the last minute the star turn, the Guy, would be sat on top.
Then came the fun – trying to light the damp and teetering pile.
Helped along by a gallon of paraffin and heaps of newspaper there would be a sudden great whoosh as it all went up; next we’d have the fireworks then the mums produced parkin and treacle toffee, and we’d bake sausages and potatoes, over the embers as the fire died down.
Needless to say it was great fun but it would have today’s parents in a flat spin.
Small kids held sparklers in their bare hands; bigger kids threw lit bangers into metal dustbins or nailed Catherine wheels to the fence and dads stuck rockets into milk bottles which acted as free launching pads, then lit the blue touchpaper and hoped their eyebrows survived the ensuing blast.
Unfortunately, lots didn’t.
Casualty departments were full of people who had made the mistake of trying to relight fireworks that didn’t go off first time round.
The firemen had a busy night too, thanks to the hedges and sheds that caught light when they were hit by fireworks or showered with sparks from bonfires.
It’s an old tradition, of course.
The original Gunpowder Plot – an attempt by Guido Fawkes to bump off King James I in order to return the Catholics to the throne – took place more than 400 years ago and as every schoolboy knows it was one of history’s greatest failures.
Goodness knows how different things would be now if the plotters had succeeded but what has changed are our attitudes to green issues and the environment.
Today it is really not acceptable to stink the place out with smoke and fumes; bonfires upset the neighbours, disrupt or even end the lives of hedgehogs, beneficial insects and frogs who have crawled under a nice, quiet pile of garden rubbish to hibernate, while the bangs and flashes of fireworks frighten pets and wildlife and leave a lot of elderly people feeling decidedly shaky.
So instead of spending a fortune on overpriced squibs that’ll be over in two minutes flat, why not join a growing trend towards a green Guy Fawkes’ Night?
Make yourself a biodegradable Guy by stuffing dry dead leaves, straw or scrunched-up newspaper into an old cotton T-shirt (with raffia “wig” or cocked hat made of folded newspaper) and put that on top of your compost heap where it will rot down; cook your party food on the barbecue and then after dark head off for a large, properly planned public firework display at a stately home or somewhere similar.
Killjoy, me? Nah!
You’ll enjoy it much more knowing your garden is safe; you won’t terrify pets, wildlife or nervous neighbours and you’ll make some decent compost instead of wasting perfectly good biodegradable material on a bonfire.
And if he was around today I’m sure that Guido himself would agree.