Well not really ill : more of a cold. But I am a man and this is the first one of the year so it’s more like a bad case of flu. Alright, a sniffle.

I had today all planned with lunch out with a friend but it fell apart at the last minute so I went out with Martin and the family in the new people mover for lunch at the marina.

Ok, it’s only a cold I have but it’s nice to be pampered, driven around and fed. I’d even left the camera at home.

Sitting with Martin and Fhai this evening we were listening to the fireworks. No one really wanted to go out to the see the Mayor’s fireworks display.

This year has been a year of centenaries with 200 years since the battle of Trafalgar and 400 years since Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament. Nelson, in the manner if his death, became a national hero who enjoys glory to this day atop his column in London. Fawkes became a national villain, plotting to kill the King and re-assert Catholicism.

Bombfire night seems to be lapsing as one of the great national festivals, taken over as it has been by Halloween (it’s easier after all to sell sweets and masks in your store than fireworks or to walk door to door on a wet night than organise a group display with the bureaucracy of permits and health and safety arrangements for a display). When I was young every street seemed to have kids making Guys and cadging pennies from passers by. My Dad would be in the back graden with the small box of fireworks. The catherine wheels nailed to the fence posts or the aeroplane rocket whose one and only flight threatened to set Mr Francis house on fire next door to us. People would gather on the wasteground up the road, know as the Frying Pan, to share fireworks and watch the bonfire.

I hope we don’t loose fireworks night. We need to hang onto some traditions.