Let’s open this old biscuit tin, shall we? The one with the old cottage on the lid, the tin that’s so old the cottage could do with re-roofing and the roses round the door are in desperate need of a good heavy shower, although of course that’ll never happen because on this lid it’s always summer.

The lid isn’t full of biscuits, of course, it’s full of photographs, old family photographs, and I’m on the lookout for a particular picture, a picture that will take me right back to a November evening in the mid-1960’s.

The chances are that I won’t find the picture, of course; I may well get distracted by other fragments from my past: there’s me on the beach at Bridlington in what look like knitted trunks, there’s my grandma peeping out from the back seat of our old car, there’s me with my old next door neighbour Mr Page.

No, come on, McMillan. Find the one you’re looking for. Tip the tin upside down and let the images fall to the floor like memory confetti. Sift through them, don’t get caught in the web of the past, find the one you’re looking for. Outside, a rocket whooshes up to the sky, and there’s a loud bang. In lots of places Bonfire Night has already started but I don’t think that mine can properly start until I’ve got the photo in my hand.

They’re amazing resources and archives, these biscuit tins full of photographs that so many of us have, tucked away in attics or at the back of spare rooms or in almost inaccessible areas of the wardrobe. They brim with family stories, with images of people you can’t quite remember and people you can never forget. Who is that bloke standing next to Uncle Don? Why is that dog looking so sad? Why is that middle aged man of uncertain provenance wearing a suit and tie on the beach? Was my hair ever that blonde and curly? Apparently it was.

I’ve almost given up finding the photograph when suddenly, there it is; a tiny rectangle of faces, lit by pale light. One of the group is holding a sparkler. One is laughing fit to bust. In the background there’s a bonfire which gives the picture another layer of light. There’s a man just outside the group of laughing faces; his cap is as flat as his vowels and his glasses are thick and glinting.

This is the 5th of November at my Auntie and Uncle Charlie’s house on North Street. It’s probably 1965 or 1966: frustratingly we never wrote dates or locations on the back of the photographs. Bonfire Night was a big thing in our family, as it was for most families back then and in those days the corporate or community-organised bonfire was much less prevalent than it is now. There’s me, clutching a toffee apple. My brother is the one with the sparkler and that’ll be Uncle Jack and Auntie Mary’s daughter Josephine who’s laughing her head off. Uncle Charlie is usually the one taking the photographs so this one must have been taken by my dad.

There’s nothing earth-shattering about the picture; it’s just an ordinary family having fun years ago, but maybe that’s the point. When we’re always encouraged to be extraordinary, maybe it’s good to be a photo hidden away in a biscuit tin rather than a wide screen epic. Maybe it’s better to be a sparkler than one of those massive fireworks that make your windows rattle.

Enjoy your bonfire. Take photos. Eat some biscuits and put the photos in the empty tin.

Bonfire Night: Toffee apple memories in a sparkling old biscuit tin - Barnsley poet Ian McMillan