TO "not a fan" aka "misery guts". Remember the dark, cold war years? Were you never a child?

Do you not recall the excitement and competition involved – and the co-operation too, collecting your bonfire pile, pooling (rationed) fireworks, cob-coaling, all the traditional food, the roast potatoes and chestnuts, parkin, black peas, treacle toffee?

The coming together of families and neighbours, the way the fun could last two or three nights with grown-ups around the embers long after the kids had been banished to bed?

Only two or three nights a year. I say: "long live illegality".

– S Mills, Ruardean.