November 6th

The crackle of small arms fire came from the direction of the allotment shed. I ducked. Gabby winced.

The trouble began when Gabby had uttered a few words of complaint about the quality of the cheap Chinese rockets she’d picked up in town. Compared to the Romanian fireworks that had arrived last week, the Red Star Dragon Super Burst Astro Rocket had been a rather tame addition to the night’s display. She’d decided to remedy the problem by tying four of the rockets together. The result had been as unpredictable as I’d predicted.

The bundle of rockets had begun to bounce around the garden, first taking out the chicken coop and eventually punching a hole through the side of the shed and igniting Gabby’s cache of .44 ammo.

The shed burned through the night, with the sound of the occasional bullet still making us hit the ground. At one point, a fire engine arrived but we managed to get them to leave us alone by claiming the shed was actually a bonfire, to which, by that time, it bore a great resemblance.

Not that any of this put Gabby off the job at hand. The Romanian fireworks were still set off with spectacular results, and the Romanian Strategic Cruise Roman Candle was fired towards Birmingham. It blazed into the sky, narrowly missing a jumbo, which must have been at 30,000 feet. I’m waiting to hear reports of it landing.

This morning’s clean-up hasn’t even begun. Gabby is still in bed, disappointed that November the 5th has passed for another year and I’m trying to find reasons to write. You might sense that I’m rather low today. Perhaps it’s the weather that shrinks a man’s spirit. My thong hangs limply, and my fingers have barely the energy to jump from one key to the other. However, I will see what I can do. I now have only 15 pages left to proofread...