Bonfires are cool

Been missing emails from home. I look forward to opening my emails in the morning and get disappointed at the absence of emails from Australian friends and relatives. I've even started reading the ex's blog again, just so I can get some news, picture of Sydney life.

Remember, remember the fifth of November.

It's Guy Fawkes day tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. I have hazy memories of Guy Fawkes before it was 'outlawed' in Oz.

There was the bonfire in the bottom park at Cromer. Someone always throws a bottle in, and everyone panics that it will explode. Don't even know if that's true, beer bottles explode in fires, but we always got in a flap about it. Once I threw a doll in the fire. Mum got mad, but it was worth it, watching its face deform and mutate in the flames.

My brother and sister got firework lighting privileges. Mum used to hold me back, which I resented. Sister burned a hole in the trampoline by lighting a Catherine wheel on it.

I was obsessed with the fireworks that had men with parachutes come out, but they always landed on the other side of the back fence in the yard of the 'nasty' neighbours. We never got them back.

One year we spent bonfire night in Blue Mountains - which had the biggest bonfire I'd ever seen. Gave me nightmares, which I still have on occasion.