I've been going (on and off) since 1993, and they're always saying it's under threat - often from nimby grockel incomers, but somehow I reckon it would go ahead anyway, with or without cover.

It really is one of the maddest events I have ever been to - I recommend it to everyone here.

Pyromania is a proud longstanding British tradition! Health and safety be damned!

It's when health and safety directives and political correctness get together that I'm intrigued:
http://www.lewesbonfirecouncil.org.uk/history/index.html
Pope-burning seems like a natural act by reasonable people. Long may it continue!

Just seen on the local news that the Ottery tar barrel burning will be going ahead after they found someone to insure them. Might be a idea to go and see it this year..might not get another chance.

Mr H

From a recent Newcastle Evening Chronicle:

REMEMBER WHEN

Villagers determined to play ball

A SECRET group got together to preserve a 900-year-old tradition in defiance of the law in February 1976.

Villagers in Sedgefield, midway between Teesside and Durham, were planning to hold their traditional Shrove Tuesday ball game, in spite of warnings from the police.

The game, which is said to have been played before the Norman Conquest in 1066, involved a robust chase through the streets of the quiet village between two goals several miles apart, starting and finishing at a bullring on the village green. Two years before, the tradition seemed doomed when 600 people turned up for the game and caused more than £300 of damage. The police decided that under the 1959 Highways Act, the game was illegal.

In spite of the ruling, these few hardy folk were trying to keep the tradition alive.

(The accompanying photo, in the paper, shows a lady stitching a round leather ball about the size of a grapefruit.And this was typed while listening to Stink singing John Dowland).