Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot…
A beautiful, bright and sunny day dawns in Virginia for what I’ll refer to as Bonfire Night, November 5th, 2009. If you’ve never heard the above poem before (or only seen it in the context of the movie V for Vendetta) then you’ve probably no idea why much of Britain celebrates tonight with fireworks and bonfires, and the burning in effigy of a certain Guy Fawkes…
A contemporary engraving of the conspirators, by Crispijn van de Passe the Elder
In 1605 a Catholic plot to overthrow the British monarchy was prevented when on November 5th, Guy Fawkes was trapped in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament with several barrels of gunpowder. His intention had been to blow up the building, killing the Government and King James I. He was tried, found guilty of treason, and sentenced to death. He was to be hung, drawn, and quartered but cheated the executioner by jumping from the gallows and breaking his neck, ensuring a far speedier death than that handed down to him by the Judge.
In 1606, a tradition was started whereby the King and Parliament would commission a sermon to commemorate the event. Over the years, the sermon, and the above rhyme have ensured that the traitorous event, and what happens to traitors, has not dimmed from the collective British memory.
If you want to read more about why the persecuted Catholics of Protestant Britain decided to take such extreme steps I suggest the brilliant book The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 by Antonia Fraser. If you prefer the information in a condensed format, you can also read about The Gunpowder Plot on Wikipedia.
Three years ago now I wrote an article about the history of Halloween, you can read it here.
The Telegraph today had an editorial entitled “Why has Hallowe’en eclipsed Bonfire Night“, with the author blaming the “American holiday” for the change. He was surprised his views weren’t supported by the British folklorist, Doc Rowe, who said:
First there was Samhain, the Celtic marking of the onset of winter, which was associated with the lighting of fires in honour of the dead, and gave rise to a cluster of customs collectively called Hallowtide. The medieval church denounced these as diabolic and supplied its own sanctified versions in the form of All Saints Day (November 1) and All Soul’s Day (November 2).
”But,” says Doc Rowe, ”by tarring Hallowe’en with an occult brush, the church made it an occult event.” The church’s disapproval fostered the growth of those parts of Hallowe’en associated with japes and misrule, a remnant of which is Mischief Night, which occurs in pockets of the North of England on November 4.
These customs of ”world-turned-upside-down” leaked back into the Christianised Hallowe’en, especially in the form of Soul Caking, practised on All Soul’s Day. Poor Christians would offer to say prayers for rich ones in return for food – and you can see how there might have been trouble if the rich didn’t play along. Soul Caking is, for Doc Rowe, a sort of pre-Disneyfied trick or treat, and it was taken to America by Scottish and Irish emigrants in the mid-19th century.
So the origins of Halloween are Celtic tradition, and Trick or Treat comes from a Christian custom exported to America. Now all I need to work out is why American costumes tend to be either Hollywood Horror (gory but not scary) or Celebrities (daft but not scary). Maybe I should start a campaign to keep Halloween scary!
Every once in a while I find myself helplessly adding a short pause and the phrase “Excellent birds!” after the word birds, when it happens to occur in conversation. Now just to prove I’m not justslowly going insane, this trait comes from a song performed by Peter Gabriel and Laurie Anderson. Not only did they both perform it but they both included it in separate albums, weird but true.
so just to prove I’m not making this up, here you go…
What is strange is that I don’t recall listening to this song a great deal, so am not entirely sure how I know the words so well. Laurie Anderson’s voice is fascinating though and I only discovered tonight that hers was my favourite voice in the BBC Children In Need rendition of “Perfect Day“. Trust me, you’ll spot her straight away.
This may not be of interest to everyone, but I’ve got a new exhaust on my car, and it looks just like this…
All new and stainless steel
So we’ve gone from 2inch to 2.25inch stainless steel, with a nice new highflow cat and magna-flow silencer. The 4inch tip looked a bit big in the box, but looks the business on the car, and the sound is fabulous.
Thanks to Piper Motorsport for the brilliant workmanship, and the lovely new sound my car makes now!
Google is making a big deal about the 30th birthday of the barcode, and although there are many misconceptions about the purpose of those bands of black and white lines, their purpose is generally well known.
However, even a good stint of Google searches didn’t return much in the way of information about the competition to the barcode, its less well known cousin the Kimball Tag.
A terrible scan of an old Kimball Tag
Kimball Tags were small cardboard tags found primarily on clothing, which were both printed with human readable information and also marked by a special pattern of holes for computer processing. Traditionally these tags would be collected at the point-of-sale and then sent off in batches to be processed at the end of the business day.
Obviously this system had some distinct limitations. The batch processing of tags made real-time business analysis difficult, and required specific handling and processing facilities to be maintained. The nature of the hanging cardboard tag made it unsuitable for using in damp environments and didn’t fit well on sealed packages, so its adoption really was limited to the clothing industry.
Regardless of these limitations, while Google may be saluting the all conquoring barcode we should take a moment to remember the Kimball Tag, the betamax of the retail industry.
Now why do I care about this humble stock control technology? Well, way back in the mists of the 1970s my fatehr developed the first computer system that incorporated the Kimball Tag reader and the computer into a single terminal. The system was developed on 8 inch floppy disks, and if the barcode had not arrived when it did then the world, and my life, may have been very different!
