Sir –Remember, remember the 5th of November Gunpowder, treason and plot...

Silly me!

Remember, remember the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th of November. And New Year’s Eve, and whenever else fireworks take people’s fancy.

Gunpowder, terrified cats and dogs and general annoyance.

Flying back into Heathrow airport on the evening of Saturday, November 1, at 5,000ft or so over London, we saw many fireworks displays, which looked very pretty from our vantage point.

So it started.

Every evening since then, reaching a frenetic climax on the weekend of November 8 and 9, one or more households in Thorney Leys and Burwell Farm unleashed a series of firebombs (so powerful have fireworks become over the past decade), with collateral damage of spent rockets landing in our garden – don’t worry, I’ll clear them up.

I’m pretty sure that when I was a child, or even more recently than that, I remember public information films advising people to keep their pets indoors on Bonfire Night.

I would have no objection to doing that once a year.

The problem is that it’s not feasible to do so for an extended period; our cat spent the whole week in a state of abject terror, and next door’s dog barked his poor head off every evening.

May I have the Witney Gazette’s approval to throw a strategic banger at 2am into the gardens of people who think such behaviour is a good idea? And at 3am? And 4am? And 5am?

Richard Savory, Thorney Leys, Witney