I feel I must respond to the letter in last month’s issue referring to the horrendous bonfire in the back garden of a house on Norwich Road, Horstead.

The culprit is a man I used to go to school with, a Mr G Fawkes who was, if I remember correctly, expelled for setting fire to his desk, his books and the Science Block! His family had a long-standing history of pyromania, in fact his great, great, great, great Uncle tried to burn down a Government building in London using gunpowder but failed and was executed. Alas, I digress, back to this outrageous bonfire. It deposited soot four inches thick in my garden some two miles away and following a phone conversation with my mother, could be seen in South Lincolnshire, surely a public outrage!!

With regard to the washing of the clothes on a Saturday, the day of the Bonfire, I have total sympathy. I myself have an annual washday in early November, around the 5th, and am totally appalled by the smell of my clothes. It would appear the world and his dog have to light bonfires just because I’ve done my washing.

Is this the same man who was also responsible for depositing white soot-like flakes the size of 20p pieces all over my garden in January? A two foot deep drift of cold, slippery, wet ‘soot’ covered our land for nearly two weeks!

Anyhow, I feel this culprit should be publicly flogged on the village green with a wet lettuce leaf across his bare buttocks.

Yours faithfully
B N Fir
Atlantic View, Station Road, Coltishall