Remember, Remember

The Fifth of November.

Sr. Mary Hyde, my senior year English teacher, drilled that phrase into us when we were reading Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, whose story begins on the fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Night.

So far, Guy Fawkes Night, or Bonfire Night as everyone here seems to call it, consists of lots of fireworks. Sam and I have been watching them from our flat all evening. The booms presumably recall the explosions that didn’t take place on November 5, 1605 when Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators were caught planning to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Apparently, Guy Fawkes celebrations used to include bonfires in which effigies of Guy were burned. We haven’t spied any effigies today, nor seen any bonfires on the beach. We did see notices about special bus service to Lewes for Bonfire Night. It seems that modern Lewes’s claim to fame is its annual Bonfire which celebrates both Guy Fawkes AND remembers the burning of 17 Protestant martyrs in the mid-16th century. We heard that’s it’s a pretty wild scene: a parade with 17 flaming crosses, bonfires galore and burning effigies. It’s a bit hard to reconcile this with our own visit of sleepy Lewes a couple of weekends ago.

We came to visit the castle, built shortly after the Norman invasion (1066, the Battle of Hastings! Another things one of the nuns must have drilled into my head) but it was closed for renovations. So we took a stroll through the gate and around the castle grounds. We ended up at the Lewes Museum, which had a very tiny but interesting collection of Lewes area artifacts, including some prehistoric finds.

While AC and I took in the exhibits, Sam found a children’s section (brilliant!) with medieval-themed toys, including a plastic castle with knights, horses, moat, the works. At one point, however, Sam whispered to me, “Mommy, I need some help.”

I came over and said, “What’s the trouble?”

She held out a plastic knight and a plastic catapult. “I can’t get this guy to fit inside his car.”

I chuckled and said, “Well that’s because it’s not a car, it’s a catapult. It’s for defending the castle. You load rocks into it.”

“No, Mommy,” Sam said firmly. “It’s his car.” Then she jammed the knight, rather uncomfortably, into the catapult, and proceeded to drive him around the castle.

And THAT’s what I’m going to remember remember from now on, whenever I think of Lewes.