My attempts to avoid minefield of CNY doomed to fail

At home in the UK, I dread Nov 5. It's not the fact that the shops are already pumping out Bing Crosby with exhausting pre-Christmas zeal. It's the fireworks.

I am palm-sweatingly, eyelid-twitchingly, completely and utterly terrified of fireworks.

For those who don't already know, Nov 5 is Guy Fawkes' Night, when British people celebrate a bunch of Catholics who failed to blow up the King and Parliament by performing a reconstruction of what it might have looked like had they succeeded.