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BONFIRE REPORT 2005
Here are some of the Rocket team's impressions of Bonfire Night 2005, with reports by Rupert Lloyd Thomas, Dino Bishop, Derek Watts, Ruth O'Keefe, Roz South and Mark Johnson. We'll start with Rupert Lloyd Thomas, seen here in our Bonfire Night studio last year, broadcasting details of the celebrations to the world: After ten two-hour Drivetime Shows it was time for the big one. I spent the afternoon before lying down in a darkened room conserving energy for a long night. Shortly before six o'clock the mic was open and I was shouting up the intro to the great Bonfire Anniversary. I seemed to have superhuman strength keeping up an excited patter for six hours. Among many bands on the night was the band of the Brigade of Gurkhas from Nepal who marched with the Waterloo Bonfire Society. They marched both sides of the War Memorial, ceremonial swords glinting in the light. What a fine sight to see - I hope they will return in years to come. We were also delighted to see the Waldstadt Fäger Band take to the streets after their triumph with a sellout concert in the Town Hall on Thursday night. The drummers at the front push a mobile cart with drumkit and how they kept going until the small hours is anybody's guess.
The Bonfire broadcast lasted six hours and I was able to identify many old friends marching in the streets including Molly Mockford waving up to me in the commentary box. Bernie McBean popped into the studio in her fetching Union Army Indian Scout costume from the American Civil War. I was only off-air for about twenty minutes while I walked from the forward studio above Fox & Sons at the War Memorial to the back studio in Christie Road.
I feel curiously flat without the radio - it does add something to life in Lewes. The local content including the many voices of Bonfire is a real buzz. I can't namecheck all the folk on my show but John Geering, an old Bonfire hand, was my last guest on the Drivetime Show. I know it was an act of courage for him to come on the radio and I am grateful to him for sharing his insights. There will never be another 400th anniversary of Bonfire - either you were there or you weren't! Signing off - Rupert Lloyd Thomas
The 400th anniversary of the failed gunpowder plot... 150 years of Commercial Square Bonfire Society... the Fifth falling on a Saturday. Bonfire 2005 was bound to be THE BIG ONE. And it most certainly was. For me personally, Bonfire 2005 had an added significance; having spent the previous eight years hanging out of first floor windows or getting crushed in the crowd, this year I marched for the first time, with CSBS. The breathless anticipation as we waited to have our torches lit for the first time and process from the Barbican was quite moving; as we turned into the High Street, lined with crowds six or seven deep, I was struck by the feeling that I had completed a rite of passage. It was like stepping out onto the stage; there was no going back, things could never be the same again. Not only did I feel the heat of the torch on my face, I genuinely felt the warmth of the crowd. The streets were lined with people who expressed a love of Bonfire in their faces and their voices. I felt elated with the feedom and sense of space that was mine as the barriers held back the spectators.
Some of it may have gone out on BBC SCR yet, strangely for a megalomaniac like me, I was enjoying Bonfire too much to care. Before 5/11/05 I liked to think that, with my involvement in various Lewes clubs and societies since I came here in 1997, I was contributing to our community; that I was taking part in Lewes life, I was not a tourist, not a passenger. Since lighting that first torch, I feel that I have cemented my relationship with our town; that I have now played a small part in its history. Derek Watts found things difficult:
What's to be done ?
Sorry to sound negative - despite all that I enjoyed the procession but increasingly feel that Bonfire in Lewes is becoming a victim of its own success, requiring searching questions to be asked about the future. Ruth O'Keefe watched with her family:
Aisling my youngest managed to get invited to watch out of an upstairs window and had a very good view of the proceedings. Siobhan my eldest had a ticket to join us but decided to watch from closer to the procession with her friends. When the food was given out at Lewes House we passed her share out through the fence for her, as she was in the crowd really close to us! Brendan stood on a large plant pot next to a palm tree to get a better view and Declan had a lot of difficulty with the loud noises. Phil spent the evening recording events with a camera and camcorder, with help from Aisling. A good time was had by all!
Roz South says: I was on official photo duty for the Cliffe as it happens - and had some rather hilarious times watching the "crowd control" and talking to the OB while waiting for processions to arrive! Roz's photos can bee seen here. Mark Johnson waxes poetic:
The costumes were fabulous, not some sort of tacky thrown together themed costumes, but really wonderful wardrobes of Elizabethan and Jacobean grandeur, there were poor souls chained to their curmudgeonly keepers, we had the wonderful, magnifcent Red Indians with truly authentic looking feathered headdresses, we saw the old soldiers from the Great War, and many, many more representing all the various Bonfire Societies. Blazing barrels of tar and wood pulled up and down the High Street, the tar torches carried aloft by all the participants was a spectacle in itself - standing at the bottom of the hill and looking up as the procession climbed the High Street was as if seeing the whole town on fire. And the funny memories that always accompany these events? One lone Elvis, parading down the middle of High Street in full Las Vegas white pantsuit. He got huge applause. The Policewoman monitoring the crowd at the bottom of the High Street from a second floor shop window. Her too often repeated warnings, like some modern day town crier, were met with increasing mirth by the crowds below. Orders for her to 'jump' were met with her own comeback 'at least you're all listening'. The policeman lining the streets to keep us in check barely hiding their smiles. The little boy curled into his mother fast asleep, completely oblivious to the blasts and flashes all around. The whole event passed off in good humour, and bags of fun. Oh yes, the fireworks were fabulous too. So much preceded them that they almost seemed like the side-show. Somehow I think we'll be going back again. And you enjoyed it too! Some of you expressed your appreciation through our Guestbook, and some e-mailed the Studio direct. Here are some extracts from those e-mails: "Thank you - Thank you - Thank you - Thank you - Thank you - Thank you - Thank you. It's brilliant to be able to listen to the bonfire celebrations at home. For the first time in years I've been unable to get out as I have young children and couldn't get a baby sitter. I was very disappointed not being able to get out but listening to it live on radio is brilliant." "[I've been] a member of a Lewes Bonfire Society for some 23 years but due to current job (chef) I could not make tonight but my family are all there! not fair! If it wasnt for you I would be in limbo, its horrid missing it!" "I have recently moved to Arizona in America and so this will be the first year that I cannot join my family for the celebrations. When I heard about your radio coverage I logged straight on and I feel like I really am there after all. So, thank you Rocket FM for making me feel that much closer to home although I'm over 5000 miles away." "It's over 20 years since I lived in Sussex, so also hello from another Arizona listener with no connection to the other Arizona listeners. I am enjoying the show enormously. Best of luck, fabulous commentary."
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All the fears about the weather and crowd trouble flew away as the
Bonfire unfolded in a style that reflects great credit on the folk of
Lewes. Playing to a capacity crowd, they showed the world what a
remarkably disciplined bunch they are, capable of putting on a stunning
show.
Rocket FM had a rock solid technical set-up and I was able to listen to
Andy Reeve in the back studio off-air while he prompted me to make
announcements - if you can't ride two horses at once what are you doing
in the circus? We received e-mail from listeners in Arizona and were
able to namecheck them during the broadcast. We also quite rightly
thanked our sponsors Harvey's Brewery and Lewes Town Council for their
generous support. We also mentioned Fox & Sons estate agents who so
kindly made their premises available for the night - surely the best
seats in the house for the Remembrance part of the evening. 
We closed the show at midnight after a great phone-in
segment with our reporters from the firesites. I was back in Commercial
Square in time to see Paul Wheeler, Archbishop, address the crowd, as
the Waldstat Fäger Band stole the show with their storming style in an
impromptu concert - the crowd bopping happily in the streets as Bonfire
2005 wound up. 
Dino Bishop experienced his first year as a Bonfire Boy:
Later in the evening, the feeling of liberation came again at the fire site; while
hundreds (thousands?) were held behind the safety barriers, I revelled in the "back stage pass"
that my gold and black hooped guernsey afforded me and enjoyed the most spectacular fireworks display I have ever experienced. I shared my privileged viewpoint with Rocket listeners during a few (probably rather too numerous and increasingly excitable!) live phone-in reports. 
I was on the corner of St. Swithuns Lane and the High Street, by Lloyds/TSB attempting to see
the Grand Procession. For some 20-25 minutes from about 8.00 onwards, it was chaotic and
frightening. Both the police and the Bonfire stewards seemed almost to have lost control. The
street itself was jammed and both pavements were packed from kerb to shopfronts. Nobody
could move. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that a steel barrier had been placed
unhelpfully across the entrance from St. Swithuns Lane, making passage both on to the
pavement and away from the street virtually impossible. It was only when a policeman had the
common-sense to move it that people could escape from the High Street down into the terrace
and the Grange Road area.
I reckon that the crowds were nearly double the numbers of the last two or three years. When the
procession was imminent, all the police could do to clear the street was to shunt people to the
kerbside, thus obscuring the views of those who had taken up good positions a long time before,
which heightened tensions, especially as these 'Street-people' all seemed to be visitors from
outside the town and the worse for drink. I saw two or three vigorous confrontations between
police officers and staggering student-types carrying bottes of wine or Newcastle Brown.
It was my turn this year as a District Councillor (this comes round
every 3 or 4 years so once in an elected term for most councillors) to
be invited with my family to watch from the front of Lewes House.
We then went home to Mountfield Road, getting in straight away with the
new Residents Passes issued by Cliffe Bonfire Society this year; a great
improvement on previous years when no-one quite knew what to take;
driving licence? Utility bill? to ensure we could get home. All the
younger members of the party had a bath and then while Siobhan and her
friends went to the Cliffe firesite the rest of us watched fireworks
from the upstairs windows; Cliffe from one side of the house and
Waterloo, Borough and Commercial Square from the other.
The processions were spectacular and endless. I don't know what Bonfire Societies do on 364 days of the year, but on the 365th night dedicated to pagans, witches, and those wretched Catholics, they do it in style. And very loudly. The noise was at ear bursting decibel level, exploding from guns on pulleys and fire crackers that spat out streams of frenzied light and bangs.
