Remember Remember, the Fifth of November

It should say, 'Gunpowder, Treason and Plot' - but mine says, 'Firewood, wheelbarrow and Shit.'

We’re coming up to ‘Guy Fawkes Night’ here in the UK.

I remember it used to be a night of great celebration and it was ALWAYS held on November 5th.

These days, we get fireworks from the middle of October through to New Year’s Eve and pets, old people and PTSD sufferers go through the trauma every night, it seems.

Back in the old days (when I was a kid) we spent weeks building up the bonfire. We scoured the area looking for just about anything we could burn and helped many a homeowner with tree disposal.

I remember one chap had a line of around seven poplar trees he’d lopped. His house stood at the corner of the school playing field and either my brother or my sister told me about the work. After school (I was at the big school by then and therefore wouldn’t have known about the trees), I went to ask if I could have the wood.

He was bemused that someone wanted to do the work for him, for free and he agreed to let me have it all.

The fire that year was IMPRESSIVE. I had to re-build it further from the house because it would have caused problems.

I remember clambering over and through demolition sites, scrambling around for planks and discarded staircases – anything that would burn – and then dragging the lot up paths and lanes to our house.

Danger didn’t seem to enter our heads and though the demolition sites clearly stated ‘NO ENTRY – DEMOLITION’ it made no difference to us.

Bruce, my dog would undoubtedly accompany us and sometimes we’d experiment on rigging up a pull-system for him. I’m pretty sure he always got out of the heavy work by sitting down and refusing to do any.

We’d borrow wheelbarrows and fetch loads of stuff to burn too. One particular time, I asked my friend if I could borrow her dad’s wheelbarrow to fetch some wood. I could, but on one condition. I had to help fetch a load of cow manure from the local dairy farm.

We trundled the wheelbarrow down the lane to the farm and we were told to help ourselves to the manure – the farmer said, “Yeah, help yourself to as much shit as you like,” and went off laughing.

We filled that wheelbarrow of the best shit we could get – the stuff at the back, as far down as we could go was the best, my friend assured me… oh boy.

A wheelbarrow filled to brimming with sloppy shit, bits of straw and liquid (how did the liquid get in there if we filled the barrow with a garden fork?) took both of us to push back up the lane. We had to work together as a team but we were a mismatched team. I was taller, longer-limbed and stronger than my friend and the wheelbarrow didn’t play nice.

We tipped it almost over a couple of times and left splotches of liquid shit on the pathway for innocent walkers to step in. Did we clean it up? Nope. I’m sorry to say we didn’t. I’m afraid we had a good laugh about it and that made the teamwork task even more difficult.

With a stinking morass of liquid shit slopping about inches from our hands, we finally made it up the lane…

Then we encountered an obstacle. The lane was a footpath only and the council had ensured vehicles couldn’t use it by embedding nine concrete-filled tubes in the path. Three rows of three posts off-set in a slalom formation made the job of transporting a barrow full of liquid shit so much more difficult.

This is the exact lane and the same posts.

From Google Maps

The only thing I’m grateful for is that we encountered no other walkers on our way. That would have been cumbersome at best.

Past the slalom and out of the lane, we made our way carefully down the narrow path to the back garden and deposited the shit, straw and liquid on her dad’s garden.

I took one look at the barrow and decided I didn’t need that to fetch a load of wood in. Who wanted a bonfire stinking of burnt cow shit? Can you imagine?

Pictures from Google Free to Use Images

Oh bloody hell, this went wrong! I re-posted the previous story and had to edit on the fly!