It's been a long time since I impressed you with my drawings.
As you can see, my talents are greatly improved by the stencil set received by the Eldest Latte for her recent 9th birthday.
I knew I wouldn't be able to get you a decent picture of the actual fireworks. Not least because, in our attempts to avoid the crowds at the city's firework display, we ended up choosing a vantage point so far away from the action that the Littlest Latte kept complaining that she needed glasses to see.
And then, as we walked away, Littlest saw someone with a sparkler. "They're drawing in the sky!" she shouted, and it struck me that dressing up in full waterproofs and sploshing out in a downpour to see some tiny sparks in the distance was so, so very far away from my childhood experience.
I'm not saying that I'm against some sanitising of celebrations. I welcome the increasing adoption of the American-style trick-or-treating at Hallowe'en, because I'd far rather open my door to a smiling family in fancy dress than have my windscreen smeared with lard.
But what do my children know of the real Bonfire Night, where you nailed Catherine Wheels to the shed door and burnt a big hole in the middle of your lawn? What do they know of fireworks in a biscuit tin, and of the peculiar bonfire feeling of having a burning hot face and frozen feet?
Will they never, like me, have the memory of burning Guy Fawkes' legs on a bonfire, because their mother's friend's children forgot their end of the deal, and turned up without the vital torso and head?
We haven't even eaten a toffee apple this year.
I read this, and it made me sad. The twenty-something pyromaniac in me, who used to happily set things alight in pub ashtrays, reared up from inside and howled.
I think it might be time for Mr Coffee to hide the matches.
