I looked at my calendar just now, and I realised that November 5th had passed me by without me even noticing it.

Back in the 40s, 50s and even 60s that could not have happened. Not even close.
Bonfire night was one of the biggest things in our year. There was even a poem starting with something like "Please to remember the fifth of November". For a month beforehand there would be shops with fireworks displays, and each cracker seemed more colourfully wrapped and promised a brighter display than the one before.
When you only had two shillings to spend that choice was critical. I should add the 'crackers' was a word that covered all fireworks, the ones that went swish as much as the ones that went bang.
Older readers will remember the whole range. Among the crackers that went bang were the little Tom Thumbs in their matted sheet, so they could be fired one at a time if separated, or in rolling bangs if left together. I nearly said rolling thunder but a Tom Thumb did not give that much of a bang. Still, they were cheap.
The penny bunger was the preferred cracker for a decent sort of an explosion, but at a penny each no-one could afford too many of them.
I can't remember the name, but there were small paper-parcel crackers that went bang when they were thrown onto a hard surface. To a child all these brought the sadness of being gone forever once they were used. With the ones that went swish instead of bang there was usually a cylinder of cardboard that could be collected, with that treasured gunpowder smell that lasted for days or until Mum threw them into the rubbish.
The ones that went swish included the exotic Flower Pots, which usually had Chinese writing on them, Catherine Wheels that spun around a nail in a tree or a fence post when they were lit, throwing bright sparks in a circle against the dark.
There were Sparklers, too, spectacular but safe enough. We found that if the wire was bent they could be spun in the hand, which was more exciting that just watching them burn down. Always, again, there was that faint, sad sense of loss when they burned out. For some reason I associate them more with birthdays that with bonfire night.
There were all the Roman Candles and their close relatives like Golden Fountains and so on that fired bright sparks in a thin upward stream. Some of them even fired balls of light in a magic I could never understand.
The Sky Rockets were the best of all, by a long way. I still remember vividly the lighting of the blue touch-paper, the wait, then the sizzle of ignition and the sweeping, climbing trajectory of a stream of sparks in the black sky and the amazing burst of stars and colour at the top of the climb
In the morning after a bonfire we'd search the paddocks and the scrub for the burned-out rockets. I recall so much of all this – but I can't recall why we collected used fireworks. There had to be a reason.
I wonder how many of us have memories of the days when were still allowed to have fireworks, a freedom that we lost long ago as we slowly became more timid and more obedient.
The bonfire itself was the main attraction. For most of us fire has a primitive attraction we leaned many thousands of years ago.
We'd collect absolutely everything inflammable – we now say flammable - from fruit boxes to tree branches. Kindling wood, pieces from the scrub-clearing, almost anything. We'd drag quite heavy bits a long way at times to build that fire. In my memory the pile would get to about thirty feet high, but it was probably more like ten or twelve.
It was always Dad that lit it, sometimes with the help of a little kero. We were made to stand well back, which added to the drama.
Because we were on a farm, and had the space for a bonfire, some of my uncles would come to visit for the night. As the fire died down, and after the last cracker had been lit, and as the darkness crept closer around us, we'd play chasing and hiding games while the adults sat around on camp chairs and fruit boxes and yarned for hours. Sometimes it was after midnight when Mum decided we should be in bed and she'd round us up to go back to the house, sometimes a fair sort of a walk, while our cousins stayed up.
If I might digress just a little, it should have been Robert Catesby Night. Guy Fawkes was born into a Protestant family but his father died when he was about eight years old and his mother married a Catholic, at a time when Catholics were very repressed by the Protestant rulers.
Guy became a Catholic and travelled to Spain to try to arrange backing for a Catholic uprising. This was unsuccessful but he then joined Robert Catesby and some others in a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Catesby appears to have been the leader, and had a plan to assassinate the king, as well.
The plotters managed to get a great amount of gunpowder into the cellars of the Houses but someone betrayed them and on 5 November 1606 the gunpowder was discovered. Poor old Guy was guarding it and was arrested. He was tried and sentenced to death by hanging, drawing and quartering. His neck broke when he was hanged so he avoided the last two parts of his sentence. The hanging was always first but was intended to nearly but not quite strangle the victim, so that they could die in great pain while being publicly dismembered.
We were not worried poor old Guy, and we never even had a Guy Fawkes 'scarecrow' atop the fire, an English tradition that Australians never really took up much.
Even so, the night of 5 November was a magical night, amazing us with sights and sounds that we'd half-forgotten over the year. It is a very real pity that we don't do it any more, because it is too dangerous and too environmentally bad. Now someone ese fires much larger sky rockets over the the city, or in a council park, and we can all stand and watch.
That is spectacular but that is all it is. It will never really satisfy those of us who took part in the whole thing, the 'real thing'. We were able to light up our own skies.