Lewes Bonfire Night 2007

Hello readers! Since I'm a bit behind with the blog updates and continue to accumulate more adventures and anecdotes whilst being too busy to write about all the old ones, I'm aiming to tell you all about the Lewes Bonfire Night on November 5th in only 20 minutes before hitting the sack!

Here are some memories from the night...

• Sharon, Ben and I watching the parade, knowing that Trev (having arrived separately by train), Judy and Heather were only a block or two away, but not being able to reach them due to the 40000 people between us and them...

• The street being so packed that at any one time there were five people touching me, and people shoving past behind us constantly, even though the announcer and police kept saying not to follow the parade because it was too crowded further down the street (where Trev, Judy and Heather were!)...

• Thousands of flaming-torch-bearing marchers wearing various elaborate costumes (eg. Victorian era, Zulu, Indian, Shrek characters...) or the horizontal striped jumpers that show which fireworks society they belong to...

• Burning barrels being pulled along the street...

• Discarded torches lying in the gutters, still alight...

• Marching bands...

• Enormous effigies being rolled down the street to later be blown up during the fireworks displays... for example, the Beatles and a policeman...

• The crowd yelling “burn him, burn him” as some of the effigies (particularly Guy Fawkes) went past... the people carrying them sometimes obligingly lighting the fuse to set off a string of crackers around the figure...

• Crackers going off constantly... when they were further down the street, we could hear the bangs and see the flashes of light... when they were on the street in front of us, we would squint our eyes, cover our ears, and hope none of the burning bits landed on us...

• The constant thought of what Australian Health and Safety would think of all this!!...
  

• Meeting up with the others later and going to the home of one of our older Lewes friends (where Judy and Heather were staying) for some soup and hot drinks...

• Heading out again to watch the fireworks displays staged around the town by the six or so fireworks societies...

• Somehow losing Sharon, Judy and Heather, and Trev leading Ben and I on a wild goose chase so extensive that we only found them at the top of a hill overlooking the town 10 minutes before it was all over...

• Watching the fireworks from a hillside cul de sac on the way to finding the others... seeing one lot in the distance, and watching another lot through the gaps between the houses beside us...

• The most amazing fireworks displays I've ever seen in my life...

• The biggest fireworks exploding across the whole sky above us, the embers drifting slowly down, looking like golden rain... and two glowing droplets of it landing right beside me.

All in all, it was a lovely evening despite the cold, crowd, and sore feet!

Click here for a video of the first part of the street parade we saw.

Click here for a video of the street parade later on... watch out for the Shrek characters, stripey jumpers, burning barrels, and cries of “burn him!” near the end.

Click here for a video of some crackers going off in front of us.

Click here for a video of the beautiful fireworks... look for the ones that explode into concentric circles of different colours (about halfway through)!

Enjoy! And now, goodnight!

PS. This did take a little more than 20 minutes... :P