Chris Spargo

Featuring a most unexpected cameo

My favourite bit is this from the comments:

I wrote "please do not deliver this letter" on a correctly addressed and stamped letter once, it never arrived. A thrilling day indeed.

This video covers Great Ormond Street Hospital, Quality Street and copyright special cases.

The term "village" and "town" are relatively meaningless in terms of population, spread, or anything.

• Lancing, being England's largest village
• Fordwych, being England's smallest town
• Northampton, has the largest parish

The decleration depends on how the King declared it a thousand years ago. Or not. After 1972 they can style themselves however they want.

To become a city, there's more of a fight

Trick or Treat

Apparently originated in Canada in the 1920s, who copied it from "(dis)guising" from Scotland/Ireland.

Guising / Souling

involved kids singing at a door around October, or November.

"Ma feet's cauld, my shune's thin;
Please my cakes an' let me rin."

After which they'd get cakes and lemonade

English people claimed it was a weird invention from the US when it came over in the 1980s. Scots and Irish though it was just a weird resurgence of Guising.

Pumpkin

Not native to the UK, we used to put candles in turnips. It migrated to the US and they changed it to a pumpkin and we took it back that way

Guy Fawkes

Kids used to wheel around a straw effigy and ask "penny for the guy" but apparently (according to BBC and Wikipedia) it's a new invention (1910) invented by Big Fireworks to sell fireworks on 5th November to kids as "Fireworks Night".