Once again I processed as a Cluniac monk with the Southover Bonfire Society.
I marched at the back of the monks' column, just in front of the brass band, which was excellent.
This year, so-called “rookies” – loud fire crackers used for scaring away birds in the fields – were falling far less frequently than usual which made a pleasant change.
The atmosphere was great!
I feel all should be welcome at Bonfire. It is a time and place where everyone
should be able to be comfortable and get along. That’s part of what Bonfire’s about.
A great number of very happy people.
My fellow monks were extremely friendly. Our
ranks have certainly grown over the years and we are a jolly bunch of ancient religious.
Southover’s first parade was very poignant
with a small boy reciting a remembrance poem at the main War Memorial in Lewes
and other little children laying wreaths.
The march ended up at The Swan Inn where there was vinyl on the record deck and good food in the beer garden.
This year the Southover Bonfire Society led the Grand Procession of all the Lewes bonfire societies, I believe for the first time.
As always it was a great experience marching down St Anne's Hill, the High Street and School Hill with the pavements brimming over with onlooker and well-wishers.
It was not quite as boisterous as the two Bonfire Nights on Saturdays in past years (Bonfire Boys and Belles will not parade on the Lord’s Day). But there was still a lot of joy in the air and grins on the faces.
The third march was the Procession of Remembrance to the Southover
Memorial for the Last Post and two minutes' silence.
I thought of those I have known who have died this year, particularly my beloved niece Emily, and, of course, those who have died in wars and other conflicts.
This year’s Southover theme was Bomber Command – a key part of the Second World War effort which was not honoured until recently and only then thanks to the sterling efforts of a Bee Gee.
It is an interesting historical chapter: how Bomber Command did dirty work for Churchill and were rewarded by being ignored post-war, rather like, decades on, the battered American soldiers returning from Vietnam.
I was surprised to learn around 55,000 members of Bomber Command had died in the Second World War.
It seemed a vast number of airmen to perish. Of course the horror hit ordinary people on both sides. Strangely enough, my late aunt Erica was a survivor of the bombing of Dresden, a teenager walking out of the firestorm city, tens of thousands of dead surrounding her. She lived on into her seventies but, I guess, never fully recovered from the Dresden ordeal.
It is absolutely right that airmen of Bomber Command should be honoured for their courage; it should have happened last ago.
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