Friday 25th October 2013

Genevieve Suzy, of the Magazine world, lives in the best house in Hastings. Pagan bonfire night takes place there before the usual Bonfire Night. I can’t remember why but Ann Widdecombe has complained about an anti-Catholic tendency.

I drove in from the Multis’ new demesne. They didn’t come because they don’t like loud noises. Angus Willis and Fergus Strachan were elsewhere in the Tudor House but not staying for the full evening. Genevieve had lost her voice. She was thoroughly criked in fact. Through the window , we saw the menacing procession setting out from the hill opposite. Masked, banging on oil drums, flaring under torches, dressed in yesteryear outfits of various kinds, they wend for miles.  In the party in the house were a Lesbian couple who run a pub and the art director of a massive Sunday paper. Genevieve took a call and croaked that the party was cancelled. Someone had banged their head and gone to Causality with concussion. This meant none of the other guests could come apparently.

I had wine and cheese straws. Very nice. The others refused everything. Genevieve took another call. We were to meet Fergus Strachan on a corner. We reached the corner and saw the very last torch of the procession receding. No sign of Fergus. Genevieve dismissed the possibility of him. We set out for the castle which is high up. William the Conqueror built it, Genevieve said. From there we would have a view of the fireworks and bonfire on the beach below. Many others were gathered so surely there would be a view. People allowed their children to traverse a barrier and frolic on the cliff edge. Genevieve’s level of crikation elevated substantially. After an hour and half much smoke billowed up from behind the castle. Genevieve began to cough. If she’d been a character in a TV costume drama she’d have been dead before the next ad break. We could hear fireworks exploding somewhere below. The smoke and cordite smell forced a retreat. Genevieve fell on a muddy bank and hurt her knee. The Lesbians and art director soothed her in a loving female way and helped her down a vertical set of steps into the town. ‘Are you all right?’ they said. ‘No,’ she said.

At last we saw the bonfire, a massive conflagration. They were burning Muslims, whose limbs you could see flailing in the inferno. We saw the fireworks too, which were gritty and furious. But the smoke overwhelmed Genevieve and we had to keep back as far as the world-famous Clock Golf Course.

Back at the best house in Hastings, a small boy dressed as a skeleton called with his mother and wanted music played then stopped so he could freeze in positions. He didn’t stay long. Genevieve suffered terribly in pushing out the party food. She’d baked 20 excellent potatoes. I had two, with grated cheddar. Plus houmous and cocktail sausages. The others didn’t take anything, except Genevieve. Finally Genevieve had to go to bed, with 17 uneaten baked potatoes to contend with in the morning.

Hastings Bonfire Night as Seen

Another View of Hastings Bonfire Night