Guy Fawkes - and an awful lot of light bulbs... By Sue Purkiss

We've just had some friends staying, and as we drove one day from Cheddar to Wells, Rosie noticed a sign warning that roads would be closed in a week's time because of the carnival.

"What an odd time of year for a carnival!" she said. "What kind of carnival is it?"

"Oh," we said, with a touch of understatement. "The carnival's quite a big thing in Somerset..."

Here, to explain, is a post I wrote a few years ago. For some reason, the carnivals are a week later than usual - so if you want to catch one, you still can.)

You've probably all heard of the Carnival of Venice. But down in Somerset, we have a carnival of our own, and this is its season. It starts in Bridgwater, close to the 5th November, and then it travels in succession to Weston Super Mare, North Petherton, Burnham on Sea, Shepton Mallet, Wells and Glastonbury. For the evening of carnival, the town centre is closed, and no matter what the weather, the route is lined with crowds of people, watching as upwards of fifty brilliantly lit carts (called 'floats' in other places) roll through the streets, drawn by tractors. Each cart has a theme, which is illustrated by performers - some have a tableau, but most have dancers, all gorgeously costumed and made-up (Strictly, eat your heart out!). The music's loud and the lights are dazzling - a cart may have 22,000 light bulbs.

Perhaps it all sounds a touch excessive - but this is a tradition which began over 500 years ago, deeply rooted and much treasured. It began when James 1 ordered his subjects to celebrate the discovery and punishment of Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators by lighting bonfires all over the land. The towns of the south west, staunchly protestant, set to with alacrity. In Bridgwater, they built a huge bonfire right in the centre of town. To start off with it was built out of an old wooden ship (Bridgwater is a port), with 100 tar barrels to get the flames leaping. (Eventually they ran out of ships and had to collect wood, like everyone else.) There were special fireworks called squibs, attached to long sticks, and a hundred 'squibbers' stood in line in the High Street and let their squibs off as a triumphant finale.

The townspeople streamed through the town to the bonfire, many of them dressed in masks and costumes. Effigies of Guy Fawkes, the Pope, and anyone who'd managed to get on the wrong side of the Bridgie populace were slung onto the fire, and there was merry-making till the early hours. Eventually, in 1880, the merriment tipped over into a riot. The town dignitaries cogitated. There was no question of banning the carnival: instead, they formed a committee (what else?), which decided that henceforth there had better be a procession, which would wind through the town so that everyone would be able to see it, and the high jinks would not be concentrated in one small area.

And so began the formation of the carnival clubs, rejoicing in names such as the Masqueraders and the Gremlins. Each cart costs thousands of pounds, much of which is raised from sponsorship. The clubs spend the whole year raising money and building the cart; to do this they need costume makers, make-up artists, electricians, mechanics, tractor drivers, artists, painters, carpenters, sound engineers and more besides. Friendships are formed, marriages are made (and possibly broken); whole lives are lived within the ambit of the club. Thousands and thousands of pounds are raised for charity. After the carnival, the floats are dismantled and it all begins again - as you travel through Somerset, you may see the remnants: a giraffe grazes in a field near Glastonbury, a camel and a dinosaur gaze at each other from opposite sides of the M5.

In 1685, the Bridgie people were still staunchly protestant, as were many others in the south west. But now, unfortunately, the king, James 11, was not. The people of Bridgwater, along with many others from the south west, took part in the Monmouth Rebellion - also known as the Pitchfork Rebellion - and they paid a severe price for it at the Battle of Sedgemoor and in its aftermath. Presumably during the three short years of James' reign, the great bonfire was not lit on the Cornhill: and presumably when James was deposed and William and Mary came to the throne, the merrymaking was even more heartfelt and more riotous than before.

But perhaps Bridgwater's finest hour came in 1938, after Britain and France had shamefully let down Czechoslovakia by signing an agreement at Munich which allowed Hitler to invade unopposed and take the Sudetenland. Shortly afterwards, there was a by-election in the town, and it was won by an independent candidate, a journalist named Vernon Bartlett (left) who fought the election on a single platform: opposing the Munich Agreement, standing up to Fascism and defending Czechoslovakia. His victory sent a clear message to the coalition government; once again, Bridgwater had stood up for what it believed in. During the war, the carnival did not take place, but one William Henry Edwin Lockyer walked the route each year. The tradition was kept alive, and it continues.

Recovery Position - Imogen Robertson

There are several advantages in being married to an itinerant cheesemonger. One is that because my husband, Ned, has a portfolio career in cheese, he also does some cheese making and that’s how we ended up spending a week on a farm in Somerset just as the weather got good.

Not sure about you guys, but once the high-as-a-kite feeling of finishing a novel wears off, I normally get very tired and usually slightly ill. It’s a pain, but it’s also part of the process. If you spend several months pushing yourself hard to write a decent book there will be payback, mental and physical. I recommend recovering on a farm while your husband makes goat's cheese. There now follows some of the reasons why. 

Quiet. I live on a main road in London and while I was writing the book there were some buildings works going on nearby. This meant as well as the sirens there was a loud semi-continual beeping from cherry-picker cranes that was… well, let’s just say unhelpful. On the farm all I could hear was the sound of the wind in the trees, birdsong, twice a day the low thrum of the milking machines, goats bleating and the occasional pig. 

Looking but not needing to see. There are lots of things to look at on a farm, but no one is expecting you to comment on them, capture them in prose, work them into the fabric of your story so they have emotional and narrative significance as well as just being interesting in themselves, so you just get to look at stuff with your brain in neutral. There was something about the time of year that meant that at dawn we were woken by the light coming in through the neo-gothic windows, and it made an astonishing gold pattern on the wall opposite. 

People, but not parties. I could lie out on the lawn and read, but there was enough activity, Ned, his fellow cheese makers, the owner and the other farm workers coming and going to make coffee, make calls and so on, so that I could remember I was a member of the human race, but I didn't need to be very proactive about it. Then in the evenings there was a chance for conversation and staring at the sunset, watching the light fade in the garden and listening to other people’s stories - mostly of travel and food. 

Fresh reading. The farm is also full of interesting books I hadn’t read.  

New things. For instance, watching the cheese being made, the sound of the whey draining from the curd as it knits together in little moulds. Or really looking at goats. Or being really looked at by curious cows. 

So you relax and absorb it all, the light, the words the quiet and you let it settle in you. I also recommend having Radio 3 on in the background when you are doing the washing up.

I studied Russian at university, and lived there a year. I didn’t become a great Russian scholar but I picked up some new habits, such as the slightly flamboyant way I now write my capital ‘M’s and vodka, but the one I’m thinking of now is the superstition that before you leave your house to go on a journey, you should sit for a moment in silence. My Russian hosts explained to me this was so your heart/soul/spirit had a chance to catch up with you and come with you on your trip (it’s also quite a handy way to give yourself a chance to remember what else you’ve forgotten in the flurry). I thought of that again in Somerset - the importance of just taking time to be still for a minute. We need those periods of silence, setting your brain in a neutral gear, letting your rather weary heart/mind/spirit catch up with you again.

Just before we left Ned and I walked into the village and sat in the pub garden. I started talking to him a bit more about the next book I want to write, but in broken sentences, half-thoughts. Ned was tired and content just to listen and let it come at its own pace. Then he went back to the bar during a particularly long pause and when he came back with another cold pint of cider, I had a couple of pages of prose - a short monologue from one of my characters - in my note book and the feeling that some how I was catching up with myself again, coming back to myself in the sunlight and the breeze shifting the leaves above our heads.

Imogen’s latest book is The Paris Winter. It was short-listed for the CWA Historical Dagger 2013. Andrew Taylor won it, but that’s ok because his book is excellent and he’s very nice.

And here is some info on one of the cheeses Ned was making.