This evening I might sit in the dark and listen to Schumann's Geistervariationen (Ghost Variations - written when he was convinced ghosts were taking over his mind, during the writing of which he attempted suicide and then died in an insane asylum … yay fun), but that's about my limit.
The sad news is, we no longer do Halloween here. Or at least we no longer do it right.
A couple of decades back some idiot imported the nastier side of Halloween from across the Pond but never got around to importing the good stuff. We somehow managed to turn "Trick or treat" into gangs of teenagers in cheap Scream masks demanding goods with menaces, terrorising lonely elderly people and plastering the fronts of people's homes with eggs if they don't get what they want. I got that treatment regularly myself when I commuted to London and was unable to get home in time to stop it, and believe me, caked-on egg takes industrial machinery to get out of brickwork.
And yes, you heard me. I said the good stuff. Stop falling over and pretending to faint. I'm actually fessing up to being jealous of the Colonies for doing something right.
If there's anyone from England sneaking in here to read this, just check out Petrea's post from Sunday or Robyn's . I defy you not to go all gooey at these übercute kids from Robyn's Halloween Party and you simply must go back and watch that wonderful Buffy Halloween episode (series 2, episode 6) to see what we're missing (apart of course from my favourite sexy witch Willow).
Back when I was a kid (around the end of the last ice age), the neighbourhood parents would get together and put on a great time for kids at Halloween. We dressed in old sheets, made paper witches' hats, baked potatoes in bonfires, carved swedes (that's the vegetable, not the people from Sweden) into little jack'o'lanterns (in austerity Britain pumpkins were for the rich) and bobbed for apples and played games while our mums and dads stood around getting quietly plastered and eating themselves silly. Good innocent fun. And nobody went around demanding "trick or treat."
Now all that is gone and I honestly don't know how to get it back. We seem to have had all the fun sucked out of us as a nation since Thatcherism destroyed the last shreds of our decency, Blairism drained us of our souls and Cameron the plastic-faced bankers' buttplug took away our jobs and stole all our money. England is a truly shitty place to live now.
It's been over fifteen years since I last saw a group of cute little kids all dressed up as ghouls and witches, politely knocking on doors and chaperoned by friendly parents (that was the time I asked the biggest kid how many of them there were so I could count out chocolate bars and he counted all the others and forgot to count himself - He looked so crestfallen I had to laugh but I gave him his chocolate anyway).
Now it's just gangs of thuggish kids and drunken teenagers in hoodies wearing cheap, unimaginative plastic masks instead of home-made costumes, sneering "Trick or treat" by which they mean "Give us sweets or money or we'll trash your house."
There's no dressing up, no community spirit, not a pumpkin to be seen in my entire village, no parades or neighburhood parties and definitely no fun. If someone decorated their house and front lawn like the one in Petrea's photo the kids would just destroy it.
For God's sake, America. Come over here and show us how it's done.
Please?
