Hamish McShanks

Ham Shanks Secret Diary w/e 5^th November

The 5^th November, as I’m sure you know, is the anniversary of the ‘Gunpowder plot’. Guido (‘Guy’) Fawkes heinous plan to blow up the houses of parliament during the state opening in 1605 and kill James the 1^st of Engerland and lots of aristocrats. Actually if were going to be correct it was Robert Catesby that was the mastermind. Fawkes was just the explosives expert. Given that a) he didn’t actually succeed and b) there were no actual explosions, I am somewhat at a loss to explain why there are a group of hooded wee neds setting off sh*tloads of fireworks in my street tonight. Can someone explain? Hmmm?

Mr Fawkes was caught bang to rights with a swan vesta in his hand! Shouldn’t we all be going around dressed as Sir Thomas Knyvet (the copper who nicked him) collaring people with big hats, dodgy beards and with lit matches in there hands? Surely if we are to celebrate correctly we should shout ‘your f*cking nicked me old china plate’ before carting them off for a bit of a kicking and some miscellaneous torture in a dark dank dungeon. If that’s not enough to satiate your bloodlust we could also hang draw and quarter them as per the conspirator’s fate.

Personally I could hang draw and quarter the wee ba*stards that are running amok through my estate just now. Even if ‘Guido’ had succeeded I’m quietly confident he wouldn’t have sniggered ‘aaaaw man look at that! That’s pure f*cking mental man’ as the houses of parliament were reduced to dust. Mind you he did have loftier ambitions than trying to launch an empty Buckie bottle into the neighbours’ garden using an Astra rocket and smoking a spliff.

Oh by the way did you know that Mr Fawkes deliberately jumped from the Gallows to break his neck and avoid the drawing and quartering? Well he did so there. And once you’ve found out what was actually involved were you were sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered you’ll understand. I did a wee search on the t’interweb and it’s more gruesome than you can possibly imagine.

First of all you would be dragged to the site of your hanging on a wooden hurdle, a decent 17^th century hardwood one mind, none of your cheap sh*te MDF from Homebase. Having been dragged through the streets you were hung by your neck until you were nearly dead. You could get in a lot of trouble if you were an executioner and you overdid the hanging ‘for pities sake Norman this ones dead! How many times have I told ye? Nearly dead, Nearly you ham-fisted idiot’

So anyway, now you’ve got scraped knees from being dragged across the poorly maintained road surface (The council weren’t any better in those days) splinters from the roughly hewn wood and assuming it’s not Normans shift a nasty rope burn on your neck. At this point it’s safe to say you’d be having a bit of a bad hair day. Then they really get Medieval on your sorry ass.

My initial assumptions were that you were then ‘just’ disembowelled were inaccurate. ‘Dear god Ham is that not bad enough’ I hear you cry. I know, but it’s actually worse. The exact description of their sentence was that ‘their privy-members be cut off and bowels ‘taken out to be burnt before their faces’. ‘WHAAAAAAT!!!! I’m fairly sure we didn’t see Mel Gibsons bell end get dangled afore his face in Braveheart! Did we? Maybe it’s just a wee one and we missed it in amongst all the pieces of his small intestine?

Anyway if he’d known that his crown jewels were going to be lopped off I’m fairly sure he wouldn’t have refused the offer of drugs from the Princess Isabella ‘ah cannay take it ma love I must have ma wits aboot me’ he pleads in a rich Aussie brogue ‘I mustn’t cry out’ he replies stoically as she tries to pour a vial of some opiate derivative into his mouth ‘okay, fair enough sweetheart but you do know they are going to cut yer todger off?’, ‘gies the drugs woman!’ glug glug glug ‘more, more, MOOORE!’glug glug glug.

I don’t think the rallying cry of ‘you can take oor lives but you cannay take oor tooooodgers!’ would have been quite as inspiring. Having said that the original wasnay much better. It seems to me that having your freedom whilst being a corpse isn’t exactly a winning scenario? Lets be honest if your ‘leader’ had just bellowed ‘They can take oor lives but they will never take our FREEEDOOOM!’ and galloped off towards the enemy you’d have a quick glance at your mate, do an about turn, and sidle off home.

If you happened to be spotted by any of the enemy as you exited the battle field you’d just shrug and blag it ‘Battle?’ What Battle?’, ‘Not me squire I’m just out gathering mushrooms in the woods’, ‘This? No this isn’t a sword, it’s a mushroom extractor’, ‘I saw one of them blue faced bastards run that way if yer interested?’ ….

But let’s not dwell on the historical inaccuracies of a multi Oscar winning film. After all it’s a minor detail that Princess Isabella was nine years old and living in France when Willy Wallace was getting his jewels filleted at Smithfield in London. So she couldn’t possibly have offered him some smack to relieve the pain, let alone be the mother of his unborn child. The fact that the next monarch, Edward the III, was also born seven years after Wallace’s death doesn’t suggest an unfeasible length for gestation at all. Of course the entire lineage of the English Monarchy is descended from Wallace….. Aye right. Although if any of that was true it would have meant he was fichering with a nine year old lassy and deserved to have his goolies cut off!

‘Lighten up Ham it’s the movies’ I hear you mumble. And your right, I should chill out and not get worked up about these things. After all I’m sure the Americans really did board fictional submarine U-571 and discover the secret of the enigma naval code. It’s a total slur to suggest that it was actually the British Navy who boarded U-110 in May 1941 six months before the gun toting septics even entered the fuuuuuuucking war!

And relax ……..

Hope yer having a firework-tastic 5^th November folks, I’m off to remover the nadgers from a few modern Guy Fawkes before they set fire to my car.

Doei