Bonfire supper (and plenty of fireworks)

WE are all one big, happy family now. We are going to be called Meeja Wales and we are going to go about like smiley, happy people singing the company slogan from the top of our voices and making friends with the Interweb. What's more there is a good chance of an increased membership of the Wednesday club in the fact that the three newspaper staffs are to be amalgamated in a grand plan thought up by the rapidly rising editor of the Daily Snail.
This newspaper Utopia is a beautiful idea in theory. The only thing we don't know is how the hell it is going to work in practice. Never mind, I'm sure it will all come out in the wash.
Meanwhile, it's amusing to see journalism's great and good (and downright bad, in some cases) gathered in little corners of Thomson Towers debating exactly what is going to happen and who is next for the bullet.
In honour of this ground-breaking announcement there was a hastily arranged Boozeday Tuesday session of which, unfortunately, I was not a part. But I'm told the alcohol was flowing and there were a few bleary eyes the next day.
Danny Boy (the poipes, the poipes) made his excuses to the solicitor. "It's all hell broken out here. There's talk of redundancies etc and I think I'd better stay out to see if I can glean any useful information," he told her.
Many hours later he returned home in a rather tired and emotional state. "I'm going to sleep in the spare room," she told him as the unmistakable smell of stale hops flooded the bedroom followed by an amorous but incapable Danny.
"I'm coming too, then," slurred the Poipes, ambitiously and somewhat bravely.
Admitting defeat, the solicitor returned to the marital bedroom and, no doubt, blocked her nose with cotton wool.
Next morning as he fell out of bed and somehow managed to put his clothes on in the right order she gave him a frosty glare. "I just want you to reflect on your behaviour last night," she told him icily.
The wonderful Withers, meanwhile, was up with the lark at 7.30 but was not quite co-ordinated enough to make a healthy breakfast. Instead he looked in the cupboard for something which would take the minimum of brainpower to cook, settling in the end on a box of pringles.
The Prince of Darkness remained nailed in his coffin, taking the day off in fear that the sunlight might finish him off forever.

I myself had a quite enjoyable November 5. I am not the greatest fan of things that go wizz, bang in the night. In fact, I bear a remarkable resemblance to the Catherine Tate character who jumps out of her skin at the slightest noise, like a cork being pulled from a bottle or someone putting a piece of cutlery down loudly on a counter top.
When Wren came over for the evening I decided we should mark bonfire night with a suitable supper without leaving the safety of the house. Having bought a bargain pack of ribs, chicken wings and sausages for £2 from sainsbury's we sat in the kitchen by candlelight and watched the fireworks go off. Bliss.
Then we retired to watch a DVD of V for Vendetta, on the basis that it's based loosely around Guy Fawkes and his ill-fated assault on the Houses of Parliament. There's a theme here, you may notice.

On Tuesday morning, of course, my phone was red hot with text messages. Evans informed me that the news had already travelled as far as Essex by lunchtime. "Wow, what's going on at your place? Very dramatic," she said.
We quickly looked on Wren's laptop to find the news was all over Hold the Front Page and the BBC website. Then we looked at our own website, IC Wales. Not a mention. Seems like the new Interweb-dominated era is going to take a while to take off then.

Withers, reviving his writer-broadcaster career on Radio Wales that morning, decided to break new ground. More to the point, he actually invented a new word.
Discussing a story in that morning's paper about a tower in Germany that leans at a sharper angle than the famous one at Pisa, he lamented: "It seems like Pisa isn't the leaningest tower in the world any more."
Leaningest, Withers? I envisage a new entry in the Oxford Dictionary next year.