November the 5th approaches and with it the thousands of firework parties held across the land to celebrate a failed plot to blow up the mother of parliaments over four hundred years ago.

I freely admit to thoroughly enjoying trotting round the garden excitedly with sparklers and watching Catherine wheels and rockets when I was young. But the choice then was comparatively limited and the volume and number of explosions were both considerably less.

However, nowadays the night’s calm and darkness is ripped apart by ear-splitting noise and exotic flashes for up to two weeks, as private parties are often scheduled to fit the availability of those attending and the weather. The bangs are bigger. The flashes are brighter. And for those with animals in particular it is gradually becoming an unmanageable nightmare. The papers are full of tragic stories of death and injury to wildlife and pets, all of which could be avoided.

Animal owners have to rush around calming livestock, horses, cats and dogs with some (if not complete) hope of success, but given the expansion of the window of celebration and the variety and scale of whizz bangs, it has now become pretty difficult, to the point that in an age when health and safety dominates every other activity, I am amazed that fireworks are still available to all, rather than just to those organising public displays and over which there can be some measure of control.

The inherent danger of fireworks was highlighted this week with the deaths of at least seventeen workers in India when their factory exploded.

Every year our horses thrash around in their stables and hurt themselves; the dogs, understandably but dangerously, try to run away from the noise (and us!), the cats run in as if the devil is on their heels and our elderly goats break out of their stable. It is a week we dread.

If an outright ban on private firework parties is not possible then wildlife and all of our pets could be partially protected by a ban on loud fireworks, at least. I support the Ban the Bang campaign wholeheartedly. As a country that is famed for its love of animals, I am surprised that the uncontrolled sale and use of fireworks continues to be an issue.

And please all check your bonfires before lighting. To hedgehogs and small animals they look like palaces built for them to hibernate in.