Time to sparkle

It's Bonfire Night and we will be out later with fireworks and sparklers. I will be making parkin, a traditional ginger cake, and will probably buy some toffee. Last year I tried making my bonfire toffee and it didn't set. That makes for a difficult and cursing job cleaning the baking tin. Don't know if I can take the risk this year.

We are all at sea a bit with finishing the house off with its extension or else we would have built a bonfire. I love the smell that permeates the air on Bonfire Night - explosives fill the air. There are lots of oohs and ahhs watching the rockets do their stuff. A vintage Bonfire Night is cold and crisp with lots of hot warming food like baked potatoes and mushy peas and hot stew and parkin and toffee apples and soup. Strangely it has to be soup that you can drink from a mug - ease of eating outside I suppose but I always think soup should be spooned not sipped. Someone is in charge of fireworks and there is great anticipation as the touch paper is lit. Sometimes we are pleased and sometimes we are disappointed with the resulting display. But sparklers always satisfy. Write your name in the air and run around (even if it isn't the safe done thing), trailing light.

My friend was telling me how she tried to explain Bonfire Night to some foreign guests last year. "Well you see we light a bonfire and have fireworks to commemorate the saving of the Houses of Parliament from being blown up by a Catholic and oh yes they executed the whole gang too back in the 1600s." She kind of stopped there as it all sounded rather barbaric. It used to be a lot worse - it was much more prevalent in my childhood to actually make an effigy of Guy Fawkes (the guilty Catholic) and throw him on the bonfire but that seems less PC now and not the done thing which is fair enough.

My family like it because it's tradition and gets us out eating, smiling, oohing and ahhing and of course sparkling. Just hope the rain stops!