Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November....

Sound familiar? Probably not, given that we live in the USA. However, if you lived in Great Britain, it would sound quite familiar, I think. The whole verse is:

"Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the gunpowder, treason and plot. I know of no reason the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot."

This refers, obviously, to November 5th, on which Britons commemorate a rather strange (from an American perspective) event: the capture (and late execution) of a man attempting an act of terrorism.

This man was Guy Fawkes. In 1605, he and 12 other conspirators planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament. They were Catholics, and had grown tired of the unfair treatment Catholics received in Britain at the time (Queen Elizabeth I had been Protestant, as was her successor, King James I); feeling that political efforts to give Catholics rights were moving too slowly, they moved 36 barrels of gunpowder into the cellars below the House of Lords (one of the two Houses of Parliament...now, some will say there are three Houses of Parliament, though this is not technically true, as the Sovereign, right now Queen Elizabeth II, is the third "house"). One of the conspirators got cold feet, though, and warned one of the Lords, who informed the King, who sent his guards to raid the cellars. There, they arrested Guy Fawkes, and in the streets, people lit bonfires to celebrate the safety of the King. To this day, people in Britain celebrate what is now known as Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Day. This day is also central to the workings of the character V in the graphic novel and later movie, V for Vendetta, which is highly enjoyable, in my opinion.

I just experienced my first Bonfire Night, and it was pretty neat. I walked around the city a bit to see if there were bonfires (I didn't see any, guess I was in the wrong part of town), and there were lots of fireworks. In fact, for days afterwards I could hear fireworks going off, and occasionally see them from my window when they were high enough in the air.

And, now that we've had a history lesson, vocab! Which is also partly a civic lesson.

The Houses of Parliament, or Parliament, for short. This is the equivalent of Congress in the States, and, like Congress, is bicameral; where we have the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Brits have the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Lords are not elected, but appointed by either the current or previous governments (and I think these posts become hereditary, being passed down through the family). The House of Commons are elected every 5 years. And the Queen (or the Crown) is techinically the head of Parliament, though generally the Crown follows the advice of the Prime Minister and Parliament (though I suppose she still has some power to override them? I don't really know, I'm still learning).

No pictures this week. Maybe I'll wander somewhere new this weekend.