I have been interested to read quite a number of recent Twitter posts which confirm a powerful hatred of fireworks and of Bonfire Night.  I enjoyed these two: “When I’m rich, I’m going to buy ALL the fireworks on sale on Merseyside and bury them” and “I refuse to endorse 400-year-old celebration of anti-Catholic bigotry.”  Personally, I have mixed feelings; the problem is that Bonfire Night and Hallowe’en have blended into a fortnight’s slow-release firework fest, combining the best of the visual extravaganza with the worst of the mischief.  However, I remember that, when I was growing up in Spalding, in the East of England, Bonfire Night and Mischief Night were rolled into one on November 5^th and children blacked their faces with soot on a cork or dressed up as ghosts and took their guy around the neighbourhood to demand (with appropriate chants) their treats; owners of pets knew that there would be only a couple of days of potential danger for their animals and the whole thing seemed to be blessed with innocent fun and excitement.  I have not forgotten that my imagination was always inspired by the occasion, for there lay behind it all a sense of the macabre and of lurking threat, which was real enough in the time of James 1^st and still finds its way in various forms into the work of crime novelists.  I rather like Bonfire Night… and a plot to blow up Parliament is the stuff of fancy!