Title image created using Gimp with these two images from pixabay, 1 2
This post is in response to the question of the week from @abundance.tribe which asks us to share aspects of our culture that might surprise people from other countries. Check out their post Cross Culture question : What is something people from other places might find strange about your country or culture? to learn more 🙂
Bonfire Night
Every 5th of November we celebrate a strange happenstance of history here in the UK with bonfires and fireworks. This can translate into an exciting night out for all the family, or a war zone style experience dependent on where you live.
Some of my fondest early memories were of visiting the local fireworks display in Sefton park. The evening would start with a walk to the park grasping sparklers in our gloved hands and writing our names in trailing light through the icy air. At the fireworks display we would gaze up at the flare of rockets bursting fountains of colour into the darkness. The night always ended by visiting one of the many bonfire night parties thrown by one of my mum's friends. Us kids would run about until late into the night playing tag, or throwing twigs into the bonfire and generally annoying the adults who were getting nicely plastered.
Image by More recently I discovered the darker side of bonfire night when taking a bus to play a pool match in an area of Liverpool called Bootle. I used to play in an amateur pool league and that November the 5th we were playing the Breeze pub. I remember getting the bus back after we won the match. Every street corner was dotted with a bonfire as fireworks whizzed by the bus and in some cases slammed into the windows. It seemed the local kids made a game of shooting rockets at the buses as they passed. All in all it added an extra level of excitement to our slightly drunken ride back into the city center 🤣
Now for the history...
Also known as Guy Fawkes Night, the 5th of November celebrates a foiled plan to blow up the English parliament by a group called the Gunpowder Plot. Led by Guy Fawkes, this group planted gunpowder beneath the house of lords but were thwarted at the last minute when a member of the group was discovered guarding the stash before it could be lit.
And ever since then we have celebrated with a slightly chaotic night of fireworks, bonfires and drunken revelry.
Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash
A Nation of Champion Queu-ers
It is a well-known fact that Brits are polite, but did you know it is a matter of national pride that we can keep an orderly queue to the point of starvation? Many a confused tourist has stood perplexed at London Euston station watching a line of passive aggressive Brits tapping their feet and sighing dramatically at a coffee stand.
Don’t get me started on the post office. With the rise in online businesses this is a rarer sight these days, but when I worked as a bar manager one of my jobs was to get change for the cash register. Every day I would wait in line, feet a tapping, cheeks a puffing sighs as some old dear held everyone up asking questions about her state pension.
On the rare occasion that a rebel bucks the trend and jumps the queue, pushing through to the front, no one speaks out. There is much muttering, and evil eyes thrown, but everyone stays quiet and miserable in their socially designated space 😂 I'm not sure if I'm overexaggerating here, is it the same everywhere else that no one speaks to each other in a queue? Let me know in the comments.
Binge drinking
I’m not sure if any other cultures engage in the charming pastime of binge drinking quite so enthusiastically as the Brits. It seems to be a rite of passage here to drink yourself into a stupor at an absurdly early age like a Viking prepping for that shit-your-pants moment before battle. Seriously, it gets beyond a joke sometimes. I don’t know one Brit who doesn’t have some type of story about climbing a lamppost, or puking off a bridge onto the motorway at 3am in the morning. My first memory of binge drinking was at the age of thirteen at a party in a little known province of Merseyside called St Helens. I swiped a bottle of something so green it would probably glow in the dark and proceeded to polish off most of the bottle.
I guess it was left untouched at the end of the booze table for a reason. Fast forward three hours, and an embarrassing amount of teenage angst ridden dancing to Prodigy, and I was Talking to God on the porcelain telephone. It was the same colour coming out as it was going in.
Yeah, I know… disgusting, but this is relatively tame compared to other stories of binge drinking escapades I've've heard down the years.
Had fun reading this delve into the darker side of British culture?
Want to write your own entry for the challenge?
Check out the #crossculture tribe for inspiration. This challenge was a lot of fun to respond to and a great way to learn about other cultures. I would like to thank @karinxxl for making me aware of this challenge through her post which you can find here.
If you would like to participate in the challenge please follow these rules:
- Post your submissions in the Hive Cross Culture! community.
- A few answers will receive a percentage of the next post and curation
- Please use the tag #crossculture and #ccq
- Check out other entries
- Share your honest opinion but try to be respectful of others too!
- Deadline: 12/12/20
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