November the Fifth.

Remember remember the Fifth of November.

I've always loved the sight of fireworks, sparklers, bonfires and immolating Guys.

The taste of baked tatties, roasted chestnuts and mulled wine. And the odd can of Export.

The smell of gunpowder in the evening.

Then there's the preparation, days of scavenging anything that will burn.(How many future antiques have been lost?)

Stuffing auld claes with newspaper and pinning them together, a papier machie'd balloon for a head.(Then adding a Thatcher mask, or pinning on a red rosette)

Nailing the St Catherine wheels to the fence posts, lining up bottles for the rockets and getting the carry out. Braw.

Yet there is a down side.

Days before hand, pets-and their owners, lives are made a misery. Of my dogs, one hates the noise and runs underneath beds or onto laps, two ignore it and the other wants to go out and attack it.

The size of the rockets. The rocket that was shot through the doors of a library a few years ago, was of the same type that I used to buy with my pocket money; a four inch cardboard tube on a stick.

It glanced off some some shelving and a wall then fizzled out.

What if it had been one of the monsters available today? Seven ounces of gunpowder encased in something that that looks like the Taleban use, would have made a mess of anyone that stopped it.

Like this cat.