I have long spoken of the joy of fireworks night in Hackney's Victoria Park. Not only because it's my local and walking though the streets with the converging crowds makes me feel all festive, but also because they put on a bloody good show.

Purveyors of pyrotechnic fun, Walk the Plank, not only hoisted into the air a giant, flaming skeleton of Guy Fawkes, but also set a model of Big Ben on fire and shot it into the sky like a rocket. All to the sounds of Bowie's Space Oddity. How brilliantly incendiary.

All this was accompanied by fireworks which surpassed the realm of eye-candy, crossing into the red-light district of non-stop eye-porn. All rather exciting but gratuitously long, leaving me wide eyed and gasping, with a clearer idea of why the council still hasn't gotten round to delivering the food recycling bin I keep asking for. Why build a hospital when you can blow things up in the sky?

Thankfully, a lovely plastic cup of mulled wine helped to soothe my nerves on the walk home.

Ami