Bonfire of the Varieties

The town I live in is well-known for the big bonfire and fireworks display that is organized for the nearest Saturday to November 5th. It is the busiest night of the year by far, with the streets, pubs, restaurants (not to mention the park where the event actually takes place) absolutely rammed. You are almost guaranteed to see everyone you know in one night.

This year we went out a bit later than normal as we decided to have dinner at home, with everywhere being so busy – a lot of places stop serving food early in true Yorkshire style, because they can’t cope with the demand. We had time to queue for one drink and chat to a few people, before crossing the street to get a good spot on the Marina (well, the park is much too muddy at this time of year and full of kids!) to view the fireworks before they started. The fireworks were really good actually, although Catherine said they weren’t as good as last year (sic), Phil said they weren’t as good as Blackpool (international fireworks championships in September – well duh!) and Teresa said they weren’t as good as Spain (she could be right). After the fireworks we went to another pub with a bunch of women, most of whom I know by sight and some to chat to. But we only got to know them better through Catherine and Teresa. We had a really good night chatting shit and having a laugh and got far too drunk. Some idiot guy in the pub kept going on about ‘bloody lesbians’ and his name was Les so I said ‘is that short for Lesbian’. He didn’t think it was funny. I also challenged him to justify his existence if he was so great, and gave him ten seconds. What did he come up with? “I’m here to drink beer”. Fantastic!

Anyway, the flip side of all this bonfire night frivolity and merriment, is that 13 years ago, a friend of our’s daughter went missing and was found murdered down the canal a few days later. They never found her killer, and every year, Geri and her closer friends put round posters and talk to people and get them to try and remember that night. There is usually an article in the local paper and/or on regional TV news, but I didn’t see anything this year. What I did see, though, was an article she wrote in The Guardian. I was really pleased for her that she got in a national newspaper, and it was quite a good article and there was a nice photo too. I told her it was great and she said it took about 5 hours to get the photo. Bloody photographers! What’s wrong with a few snaps?

Geri’s younger daughter is now the age that Lindsey was when she went missing so it’s really hard for her to let her have her freedom, but she’s a really strong woman and copes fantastically. I really hope she finds out one day who killed Lindsey.