Last year I invited a colleague to Bonfire Night in Lewes. "It's spectacular," I said. "Your children will never have seen anything like it before." Too right.
As they made their way across town to our house they got caught up in the firecrackers, weird costumes, burning torches and loud music of a procession. The children - robust country kids from Kent - begged their parents to take them away from "this horrid place".
