Every year it hosts a carnival on Bonfire Night (for those of you not familiar with this, the 5th November is a day of celebration in the UK, to celebrate a thwarted plot to blow up the houses of Parliament in 1605).
Our friend Helen, one of Levi's colleagues had promised us for weeks to take us to 'the best bonfire night ever' and with much excitement we drove with another colleague, Sarah, to the village of Ottery to watch the flaming tar barrels (http://www.otterytarbarrels.co.uk/). Allegedly a tradition dating back to the seventeenth century, perhaps to fumigate shops and homes before the winter, it involves burning barrels steeped in tar being carried by residents up and down the street until they break up. I had no idea what to expect. Probably in my mind I was envisaging a few burning barrels being rolled around a nice square watched by crowds behind nice protective fences. My wrong. In reality, health and safety doesn't exist for this event. Goodness knows how in this day and age it is allowed to continue, but lets put it this way... its deadly fun but more than a tiny bit dangerous. Picture tiny medieval streets packed with twenty thousand people, many of whom are tipsy students and sixth formers and big burly men and women running through the crowd (no barriers in sight anywhere) with a massive flame thrower on top of their head. At more than one point in the evening I was thrown into a wall to escape turning into a fire ball myself and at one point headbutted a rather portly gentleman in the belly to escape a fiery barrel coming right at me. I was absolutely mortified, but the chap laughed his head off and declared it 'great fun.'
There was folk music and dancing, beer brewed just for the occasion by Otter (the name will come back to me), hog roasts, donuts and mulled cider. My kind of evening really. I think I'll be back soon as there seems to be a lot of foraging potential in Ottery as well as a number of ale houses.
Have had a good rest of the week. Busy with marking mostly but had the opportunity to attend the Annual Ethics Debate at Exeter Cathedral today (http://www.exeter-cathedral.org.uk/history/school-visits/sixth-form-debate.ashx) with the College which was really excellent. We have our friend, Alex, visiting us from Cheltenham tonight and hope to return to Totnes tomorrow. Fingers crossed the Medlar fruit is still there. I am itching to pick some. Have a great weekend all!
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