Remembering the Fifth of November

Saturday 7.11.09

Just past bonfire night and as I write this, I can hear fireworks. This year, journalists have taken to complaining about the pervasiveness of American-style celebration of Haloween, so the letters pages are missing words on the theme that fireworks are distributed to too many people for too long a period. Now I find I rather miss shouting 'it's because people let them off for Divali' at the paper.

Nick and I are a bit sentimental about bonfire night. On November 5th 1984, on the way down from some illicit passion, we watched a red marine flare floating leisurely down to earth. We said at the time that we would always spend November 5th together. Shortly after, following a tip-off that my Mum was on the way, we were forced to scarper. We didn't spend every bonfire night together as it turned out, there's been college and work and all kinds of commitments in the intervening years. To my eternal joy, we are still together. This year, we went to see a film that we both enjoyed. The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus was a feast for the geeky lover of the fantasy genre. It was an unusual thing for a picture to come along that we both wanted to see, making it a special pleasure. As we walked home, we watched the fireworks coming from town. We didn't ask each-other to spend out remaining bonfire nights together, but stood hand-in-hand and picked out the ones we liked best. The next night, Nick told me I was precious and gathered me up to rest in my favorite place; the hollow of his collarbone. Twenty-five bonfires on, and the romance lives.

Speaking of love, I had a real flash of concern about my baby brother in Beijing. When I saw him off on the bus to the airport, he didn't have a good pair of shoes (we found that out during our rainy stay at the Edinburgh Festival). I saw on Newsround (children's TV news) that Beijing was coated in snow that at arrived thanks to a weather altering experiment. I pictured my ever frugal brother cold footed, snow melting into his old trainers. Anxious to find out more, I watched the grown-up news, but there was nothing on Beijing. Perhaps the almost unbelievable sci-magic was only fit for children. I emailed my brother, this is the reply:

Replaced successfully, new shoes still leaked because of the massive downpour the night before the snow but it's ok, they're fine now. Still rather cold here though. Is the UK still a bed of warmth? x

there was a follow-up too:

Oooh, in terms of footwear gossip my two new pairs of shoes are Chinese brands - I'm supporting the development of the Chinese textiles industry as I think it's a route out of sweatshop dependence (even though they obviously just produce them in their own sweatshops, at least at the moment). No rain / snow for the past few days, just horribly low air temperatures to deal with. Central heating hasn't officially come on here yet (the official date is Nov 15th, set by the government and only applying to housing above the Yangtze river - hence why it never came on in Nanjing, even when it was sub-zero) but the community management committee have authorised it for a couple of hours in the evening.

Loads of studies, not much work as students keep cancelling, no longer scheduled to represent MA Linguistics at the uni-wide karaoke contest as it's been cancelled over swine flu, still in scholarship limbo, otherwise things are going well :) Miss you too x

So there you go, he's fine but a bit chilly and with wet feet. It's a good job he never grew up to be a soldier. Poppies would definitely not be enough.

To complete the love theme: we've had our new dog Bingley for a month now. He is very sweet and mostly settled in aside from needing to work on recall. It has all gone fast and I still don't feel he's quite ours yet. It's coming though.