Remember, remember the fifth of November. Except it’s not really possible this year, is it? Given that we’re not even allowed to meet up in our gardens, the chances of anyone watching an effigy of an unfortunate 17th-century gentleman go up in flames today are zero.
In one way, I can’t say I am sorry. Guy Fawkes night is a very Protestant feast; when I was growing up in Ireland we’d never have celebrated the execution, following torture, of a man whose chief objective in seeking to blow up parliament was to secure greater freedom for Catholic worship. See Alice Hogge’s cracking book God’s Secret Agents about the sense of thwarted expectation following the accession of James I that led to the plot.
But that’s beside the point. The thing is, in recent years Guy Fawkes has been well and truly displaced by Halloween — or at least a version of it.
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