Guy Fawkes grinch

You may remember that I love Christmas, and I’m also a big fan of Halloween.
I know these opinions aren’t universal, and that’s fine. Live and let live. The holiday I like less and less as I get older, though, is Guy Fawkes. I used to enjoy it as a kid, and the inevitable fires and injuries that happened every year just seemed an acceptable part of the adult world. I have no memories at all of how any of our childhood pets experienced it. I do remember my brothers emptying the gunpowder out of the crackers to wreak maximum destruction, as well as manufacturing various types of weaponry such as the poha powered mortar that was turned on bees innocently harvesting pollen on flowers, destroying them in toto.
When our 12 year old neighbour emptied the contents of several double happies into a glass jar and then put his face close to it to see what would happen when he dropped a match into it, the fact that he lost his eyebrows was considered an apt consequence of his stupidity rather than a problem with the availability of gunpowder to young people.
It’s not that I don’t like fireworks. I love an impressive public display as much as the next person, and our winter Matariki holiday seems an excellent time for such a thing. The fact that it’s a holiday borrowed from the Northern hemisphere doesn’t really bother me either. The celebration of spring at Easter in March/April is a case in point. (Yes I know it’s about celebrating the resurrection of Christ, clearly based on fact rather than bunnies and chocolate eggs). The problem is that any oick who can foot the bill (or shoplift) can terrorize my dogs any hour of the day or night in the week around November the 5th. Honestly , if you’d seen the poor things cringing behind the sofa last night your hearts would bleed, unless you’re a complete monster, and/or one of the aforementioned oicks. I’m sensing also that the number of people who might cry “Nanny State!” If the government tried to ban them is going down as the number of significant fires around this time goes up. Here’s hoping.