The annual event - in which the burning of an effigy of Guido Fawkes, the leading papist conspirator in what Gerry was taught was a ‘plot to blow up the houses of Parliament’ and its heretical members - was a widely and enthusiastically celebrated event. Old lumber, furniture, scrub wood and rubbish was gradually assembled into what became known as a bonfire, around which adults and children would gather, sparklers in mittened hands, to recall the savage and primitive deaths of those who dared to commit such an act of treason and thereby threaten the monarchy and orthodoxy of the proud island state of Great Britain.
To Gerry and his friends it meant bangers and rockets. Not for them the dubious delights of catherine wheels, jumping jacks and whiz-bangs but the simple hedonistic pleasure of startling their neighbours with penny bangers or stunning themselves at the somewhat erratic performance of the rockets of the day. The problem was, in many ways, similar to that of cigarettes - how to obtain the ordinance necessary for such an enterprise without their parents’ knowledge. This was usually resolved, in time honoured tradition, by the ‘penny-for-the-Guy’ routine in which children would scavenge the worst of the household’s clothing and from an old pair of trousers, jumper and pair of one’s mother’s discarded tights, fashion horrifically featured effigies of the unfortunate catholic conspirator. This would then be stuffed with old newspapers and loaded into a wheelbarrow which would be wheeled around the neighbourhood by the more enterprising children who would stand on the doorstep and sing their plaintive - if tuneless - ditties in an appeal for funds to finance their pyromaniacal desires. One such number, which Gerry and his brother Glenn had gleaned from their musical mother, was:
Please to remember the fifth of November the poor old Guy
A whole in his stocking, a hole in his shoe,
Please can you spare him a penny or two?
If not a penny a halfpenny will do
If not a halfpenny then God bless you
Its simple charm belied the message that the collection was on behalf of a tortured and condemned man whom their effigy represented and which would ultimately be consumed in hell-fire, courtesy of their contributions, in an annual orgy of destruction.
The ingenuity of Chris Palin was however about to add a new and memorable chapter to Gerry’s experience of bonfire night. Chris had the timely notion to circumvent much stuffing and fussing with old clothes by the simple expedient of dressing his younger brother Gary in the tattiest of garments available in the family household and applying a hideous recovered-cardboard amalgam mask - in uniform red or grey colour and painted with a hideous visage, available for pennies from the local newsagents - to the recalcitrant boys face. Coerced into an old pushchair with promises of a share of any booty, the reluctant ‘guy’ was then wheeled around the most affluent areas of the estate whereupon, arriving at the polished doorways of prospective donors Chris would begin his mournful chant and incantation for cash.
Money, we want money!
Two-and-six will do, but so will five pounds!
It was, in truth, blatant beggary, but the haunting tune - which consisted of four repeated monotones, followed by two a fifth below, returning to the original note for nine more quavers but finishing with a flourish of a single lower fifth crotchet. This two note masterpiece, which was in fact the very first self-composition that Gerry had ever heard, was astonishing in its effectiveness, compelling those unfortunate enough to be subjected to it to freely part with considerable amounts of small-change, though everyone somehow managed to resist its invocation to part with a fiver. Flushed with success, the performance was repeated almost every night of the week preceding the event itself and a not inconsiderable amount of cash was pumped from unsuspecting members of the public who would be astonished by the sudden animation of the previously inert ‘guy’ once they had been persuaded to part with their hard-earned cash by this simple deception. No-one however complained and the scam was a well-oiled machine when Gerry received some alarming news from his mother about the imminently arriving November the fifth.
“You’re going into hospital to have your tonsils out” she calmly announced on the eve of the eve itself.
“What? You‘re joking?” he queried her quietly serious tone, as she peeled potatoes at the kitchen sink.
“You’ve been having too many sore throats and the doctor has decided that it would be best to take your tonsils out, and you’re going in to the County to have it done tomorrow!”
Her tone didn’t invite argument and Gerry knew that any further discussion would immediately be referred to his father when he got home from work. Disconsolately he told Chris and Gary that they would have to manage without him as his parents had decided to send him to hospital for an operation, which although Gerry wasn’t looking forward to any such ordeal, he at least knew he would obtain some sympathy from his co-conspirators and be spared any teasing on such grounds for missing the conflagration that their collective efforts would easily have ensured when big brother Ronald returned with their cache of explosives from the local shop.
Gerry was not a fan of hospitals and had made several visits there in connection with his sore throats, in addition to the many visits his mother had made with him to casualty after one misadventure or another. He was slightly relieved to learn that he wasn’t quite old enough to go into the men’s surgical ward and was therefore checked innocently into the children’s surgical ward which as the consultant applied his ‘pre-op’ medication was a world of calm and serenity as crisply dressed angels in uniforms wafted silently around him and the anaesthetist. When he came to from the short operation Gerry awoke in a world of pain and devastation. It wasn’t simply the torn feeling in his raw and bleeding throat that concerned him, but the deafening and incessant shrieks and screams of children all around him that was unnerving him as he arrived once more in the world of the conscious. His waking eyes stared in horror at the many scorched, burned and wounded children who howled their miserable pain at the team of medics who wheeled them in from casualty, raw skin peeling from their immolated hides, as their contorted faces exulted the overwhelmed doctors and nurses to end their agony, somehow, anyhow. Attached, like Gerry to drips and reeking of both ointment and terror, these were the annual bonfire-night casualties that all children were warned were the inevitable result of ‘playing with fire’, an inevitability given the popularity of this annual festival of fire!
The sights and sounds were unbearable to Gerry who, in his own world of pain looked on in shock and horror at the results of wayward rockets, errant jumping jacks and the fingerless hands (and handless limbs) of lethargic banger-throwers. The cacophony of misery and agony was relentless. No-one slept in the ward that night and the stifled sobbing of mutilated children left a deep scar and had a profound effect on Gerry which had its own disabling effect upon him. Never again would he join-in this annual festival of flesh, this carnival of innocent innocence.
He was no longer sorry for himself nor held any regret at his own absence connected as he now would be forever more with the destructive properties witnessed in the writhing bodies and contorted howling faces of its marred and mutilated victims. If this is what fireworks meant, you could keep them he later told his father, for whom he had waited interminably when, having been offered the simple but stark choice ‘eat your breakfast and you will be allowed to go home’. Gerry had consumed the sharp and therefore painful cornflakes (which felt to him like broken glass flakes) with gusto if not relish, knowing another night in this hell-hole was more than he could possibly endure. His own partially pointless mutilations (what exactly did adenoids do?) didn’t compare with anything he had seen or heard that night, a night he could never completely forget. Nor would he entirely understand which bright spark had decided that November 5th would be a suitable date to book him in for a tonsillectomy? It would not be the last time that Gerry would question the wisdom of an institutional decision.
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