11 ideas for a sparkling at-home Bonfire Night

Already this year, the coronavirus pandemic has robbed us of milestone birthday celebrations, holidays and weddings. It has cut us off from loved ones and friends, and left our houses packed to the rafters with stockpiled toilet paper and home-baked banana bread. But it will not – it cannot – take our Bonfire Night.

Public fireworks events are of course cancelled, along with just about everything else you might feel like doing at this time of year, or ever. Private parties in your garden with anyone from outside your household are also no longer permitted.

However, there are plenty of ways you can mark the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’ failed attempt to blow up the Palace of Westminster with gunpowder, should you wish to. And none of the suggestions below place you at risk of arrest for a new form of treason known as ‘breaking lockdown rules’.

Here’s how to celebrate Bonfire Night during a November lockdown:

1. Garden bonfire

Dangerous activities, such as playing tennis or golf with your own spouse, are now banned, but the good news is it’s still completely legal to light a massive fire in your back garden and burn stuff on it. Hurrah! Bear in mind the usual fire safety advice (here’s our step by step guide to building a bonfire safely) and also that emergency services have enough to do at the moment without having to come and deal with the fact your neighbour’s shed has somehow accidentally got caught up in your celebratory conflagration.

Perhaps you’ve already bought a firepit, this autumn’s must-have pandemic accessory? If so, this is a great chance to get your money’s worth from it, while turning smugly to your doubting partner and telling them “see, I told you we’d use it.”

2. At-home fireworks display

Again, there’s nothing to stop you putting on your own, small-scale fireworks display in the garden, for the benefit of the members of your household – and any neighbours peeking from their windows.

Throw some sparklers into the mix too (not literally – that’s against the Firework Code) and write ‘roll on 2021’ in the darkness.

If you’re still on speaking terms with your next-door neighbours following seven months of working from home, why not co-ordinate a joint fireworks display? They could watch yours from their garden and vice versa, thus stringing out the fun for twice as long, so that everyone is twice as cold by the end of it. Serving hot chocolate or hot toddies will mitigate some of the incipient frostbite.

String up some fairy lights, too, and make the garden look extra festive.

3. Firework-spotting walk with a friend

Under the new lockdown rules, you are allowed to go for a walk with one friend or family member from another household. It’s known as the one-plus-one rule, because it enables one person from one household to meet one from another outdoors in a public place (with pre-school children permitted to accompany you). So even if you live alone, it doesn’t mean you need to spend this evening by yourself. Get together with a friend for a nighttime walk in your local area so you can watch the fireworks exploding in the sky above other people’s gardens as you go. Wrap up and bring a flask of something warm.

4. Toast marshmallows

Don’t let a good bonfire, or impulse-purchased firepit, go to waste. Marshmallows are definitely essential items, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble tracking some down in your local shops. Your lockdown health kick can start on November 6, or at whatever time of evening you reach the bottom of the massive packet of sweets.

5. Bake parkin

In parts of Northern England, you can’t properly celebrate Bonfire Night without parkin. So much so that in 19th century Leeds, November 5 was actually called Parkin Day. This dark, spicy, gingery, treacly delight of a cake is really too good to be relegated to one day of the year; but since it’s that day today, it’s time to get baking. All its constituent parts are store cupboard ingredients you most likely already have to hand, so it lends itself particularly well to a situation where shopping involves more rigmarole than a gunpowder plot.

6. Make toffee apples

Or you could buy them, of course. But where’s the fun in that? If you’re the discerning type, you’ll have long ago noticed that supermarket toffee apples taste like they’re made using fruit that would otherwise have been deemed unfit for even animal consumption and tipped straight on to a compost heap. Instead it’s covered in toffee to disguise its shortcomings and sold as a treat. If you make your own, you can use only the crispest and juiciest apples.

7. Cook a Bonfire Night feast

If you’ve noticed a gastronomic theme developing, well done. This is a season for hunkering down with platefuls of steaming comfort food, and thankfully that’s one activity that even lockdown can’t steal from us. Do think: scalding hot baked potatoes with plenty of butter, salt and pepper; fat, good quality sausages or juicy beef burgers with lashings of tomato sauce; buttery corn on the cob. Don’t think: wasn’t I supposed to be healthier during this lockdown?

8. Watch an appropriate film

If you can’t quite muster the enthusiasm for standing around in the cold, don’t. Grab your freshly baked tray of parkin  – you did make the parkin I told you to make, didn’t you? – and curl up on the sofa in front of a film. Apt suggestions include The Wicker Man (1973), V for Vendetta (2005) and Witchfinder General (1968).

9. Virtual fireworks, 2020-style

If you can’t be bothered to put on your own fireworks display, you can watch far superior ones on television. Alexandra Palace in North London has, like everywhere else, had to cancel its annual display. Instead, it will stream its 2019 one from its website, starting at 6pm tonight. Try not to think about the fact that more than 90,000 people were able to pack together to watch it a year ago and wonder, wistfully, when such a thing might be possible again.

10. Festive crafts

Children off school because their class or year group bubble is in the midst of a 14-day coronavirus quarantine? Plenty of children currently will be. So once you’re done with home-schooling for the day, try tempting them away from Netflix with some craft materials. You might just be able to squeeze an hour of fun out of making bonfire collages, toilet roll rockets, pipe cleaner fireworks, jam jar lanterns and sparkly night skies.

11. Make a Guy

You’ll no doubt have your own ideas about which villain of 2020 you’d like to base your Guy on. Far be it from us to make suggestions...

Read more: Your ultimate Lockdown 2 survival guide