Blowing Shit Up

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot …
I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Kinda crap as a poem, but any day when the whole country celebrates religious extremists trying to blow up Parliament gets my vote.
Hmm … what's wrong with that picture?

An oddly schizophrenic mood grips our crowded little island this weekend.
Here's uncle Tony ripping up human rights legislation, stomping all over civil liberties and privacy, and shooting innocent people, in a vain attempt to stop religious extremists from blowing shit up …
… while the rest of the country celebrates that very same act with an orgy of explosions, huge fires and burning effigies.
All very civilised …

I had intended to moan and gripe about the gangs of little shits who roam the streets in the early hours, setting off the loudest fireworks they can find and stopping me or anyone else getting any sleep from mid-october until the new year.
But then I remembered the more "innocent" days of my youth.
Fireworks were harder to come by (at least the ones which made a really good BANG), so we made fertilizer bombs …

This was before the IRA's rather larger scale devices made it illegal for thirteen year old kids to buy fertilizer over the shelf (yet perfectly legal for adult Irish Republicans … never did figure that one out).
But, I'm ashamed to say, having started by blowing a friend's lovely working steam engine to smithereens, we went on to gleefully blow up gullypots and drainage culverts, a telephone box (that was fun) and - to my eternal regret - a rather large tree.
The tree put a stop to it. I like trees.

These days, when Uncle Tony's gung-ho boys in blue shoot people for riding on a tube train, we would probably be holidaying in Guantanamo by now.

No idea what this post is rambling on about really. But as Yoda and the NaBloPoMo posse seem to be putting the pressure on, I thought I'd better post something.

So, Happy … er … Setting Fire To Stuff, Burning Effigies And Making Explosions In Celebration Of Religious Extremists Trying To Blow Up Parliament Day.

Now I'm off to watch V For Vendetta again (I would read the graphic novel instead, but I like looking at Natalie Portman [Kundsen would understand]).