WHEN I was a boy, I wore thermal pyjamas. Not all the time, obviously; I didn't swan around in knitted jim-jams till my midday Manhattan like some latter-day Noel Coward. That sort of thing could have singled me out at my comprehensive, where the bigger boys took an admirably consistent, if robust, attitude to nonconformity.

No, I wore thermal nightwear on winter nights only. Even though our house wasn't particularly cold. This is not one of those hard luck stories where I am up with the soot-stained lark hacking at the frozen outside privy with a pan handle to make a cup of tea.

We had central heating, but I was a sickly child. A sudden draught could seize me up in a second. A cocktail of Valium and shandy would then loosen me up to the point that I was school limbo dancing champion four years in a row, making it under a toilet cubicle door in one heroic heat.

In other words, the thick pyjamas were a precautionary measure. They were itchy and uncomfortable. But on one night of the year I actually enjoyed climbing into them.

Behind your birthday and Christmas Day, November 5 is the best date on the calendar for any kid. You get to stay up late, break your teeth on concrete toffee and wield a knob of fire on a stick, called a sparkler. This was glorious freedom for any child who had been told for the past 364 days not to mess with matches.

Those autumn nights were colder than these, hence the need to don thermals as part of my knitwear festival. However, once the first rockets exploded into the sky, all thoughts of the cold disappeared.

My brothers and I enjoyed both types of display: the professional kind, held in a farmer's field with an Everest bonfire centrepiece and deafening, dazzling pyrotechnics that resembled a galactic battle.

Then there was the back garden kind. My dad would trudge on to the muddy lawn with a biscuit tin containing small fireworks and a rubber torch, dashing back to safety after lighting each one as if a Pompeii-scale eruption were imminent. In fact, there was a fizz and a few pops and our dandelions were briefly illuminated by three feet of silver sparks. But how we loved it.

These days, I am the dad with the tin and the torch. It is my turn to be the butt of family jokes about the likelihood of my wiry eyebrows going up in flames. And it's great. We are forging indelible childhood memories in fire and smoke.

Of course it is depressing that there are some who have chosen to terrorise York suburbs by using massive fireworks to explode wheelie bins and phone boxes.

Nevertheless, I hope those who call for a complete ban on the sale of fireworks do not win the day, or rather night. New legislation will prevent the sale of the loudest ones to anyone without a licence, and impose curfews on the detonation of what's left.

Anything more could rob families everywhere of an annual opportunity for noisy, dazzling joy to explode the night-time routine of chores and homework. That is particularly true now many public displays are being called off because of insurance company greed.

No one needs to buy mini cluster bombs or barrage packs to have a good fireworks night. Just a small box of bangs and a jacket spud is enough for a night of cheap thrills.

Thermal pyjamas optional.

Updated: 11:08 Wednesday, October 15, 2003