Another year, another three-week period of fireworks frightening the dog and making baby bigmouth’s bedtime an ordeal. Not to mention the depressing headlines: this week’s local paper tells of fireworks being chucked through a hearing-impaired pensioner’s letterbox. What fun!

Personally I don’t see any reason why fireworks should be available to anyone without a licence when every town has its own, properly run spectacular, but I appreciate that banning punters from buying explosives probably violates their human right to be a selfish bastard. So I have a solution: any adult can buy fireworks provided they pass a simple test.

Here’s the test:

Shopkeeper: hello! Would you like to buy some fireworks?
Customer: yes please!

Customer! You have failed the test!