Let no one say that Germans have no sense of humour.

Overheard on a bus

Tall, skinny, blonde, cute, German student wearing a parka talking to short, skinny blonde, cute, German student wearing a parka.

TSBCGS: “zwei… vier… fünf!”

SSBCGS: “fünf?”

TSBCGS: “fünf!”

BOTH: “Ha, ha ha ha!!”

Afghanistan is very popular

Overheard on a train:

“Your country is very remote. Is disappear. England is very famous, all people know where is England, 90% of all peoples. Iran, 60% know where is. Afghanistan before the war is very disappear, but now Afghanistan is very popular”

(An Iranian man talking to a Mongolian man)

Bonfire 2008, Lewes

Here are a few pictures of Bonfire at Lewes last week:

Now we have new shiny tags on this site there is no real point in pontificating about the wonder Bonfire – in the unlikely event that anyone wants to see last years rambling wibble, just follow the tags! As usual, click on the pictures to see more.

I didn’t get to any firesites this year because the people I usually stay with weren’t around Next year perhaps I ought to organise something rather than just go down on the train at the last minute. So no actual bonfire and no fireworks – well, no large aerial displays anyway I hung round Western Road for most of the time I was there, in and out of the Black Horse (lovely St Austell ale!) and the Meridian (Shepherd Neame, but they were running out)

I avoided the nightmare of overpoliced stations coming down by going to Cooksbridge and walking in from there. A very pleasant stroll on an early evening, apart from the traffic. And a nice pint of Harvey’s in the Chalkpit Inn on the way – though two of the other pubs I passed were closed. Getting out was hassle though,. The western end of town was relatively relaxed – the police were happily joining in and I got the feeling that there were slightly fewer spectators and more marchers than the last couple of years – which makes the atmosphere better (he says, possibly rather hypocritcally, as I am a spectator myself). But at the east end of town near the station there was a lot more intrusive policing and some very silly barriers that forced people to go a long way round into the station and missed me a train. Hence the pictures from the platform.

You can see where Cooksbridge is on the railway on this map:

The pink bit shows where the nice railway kindly withdrew their cheap tickets scheme for the day. Actually, it is a pretty good indicator of the areas of East Sussex where Bonfire is still kept properly. It goes a bit beyond that – there are big Bonfires at Battle and small ones into Kent, and there are even a few in West Sussex, all the way to Littlehampton (in these high matters West Sussex is in many ways less like East Sussex than Kent is). But that pink blob is a good indicator of the heart of the festival.