Howling at Halloween
Cloaked in a general malaise (rather than a Dracula-inspired cape), I've found some sparklets of joy.
Last week I inhabited a weird parallel universe that involved an ambulance, a milk float, a cosmetics universe powered solely by oestrogen and little sleep, hence no newsletter. That is something for next week.
Tonight I’m writing this anticipating frequent interruptions from the trick or treaters. I’ve been drumming my fingers muttering, ‘Where are all the small people?’ anticipating the early wave of those who need to be in bed by 8pm. The door bell goes, the dog goes batshit (clearly in the Halloween spirit) and I’m greeted with possibly the most polite primary school trio I’ve ever met, despite being masked and in blood-spattered T-shirts.
‘Happy Halloween!’ they chorus. I suspect they might break into a three-part harmony at any minute. Has the minutely menacing ‘Trick or Treat,’ with its creepy-Victorian-doll-come-to-life sing song intonation, been the latest thing to be erased from the ever-shrinking fun palace? Probably. I remember years ago, innocently asking the Head of my eldest’s primary school if they were doing anything for Halloween.
‘No, Mrs. Reed. That is a pagan festival and we are a school of the Christian faith.’
Suddenly, I felt like Fenella the witch from ‘Chorlton and the Wheelies,’ the eighties classic that used to give me nightmares (let me know if that was you too).
‘Ah yes of course! Silly me.’ At that point I imagined that she probably had me down as someone who read runes and performed moonlight rituals; that I was involved in the dark arts, when really I was more interested in the latest dramatic arc in ‘Biff, Chip and Kipper’ because my brain was too addled to cope with ‘Spooks.’
Anyway, back to the Halloween version of Von Trapps. They didn’t go for the claw grab; they chose an item each and were wowed by the presence of chocolate eyeballs which they deemed ‘soooo cool.’ Having teens, I’d forgotten how easy it was to impress small children. I shook the overflowing bowl at them urging them to take more. They appeared incredulous. What I should have done was run to their parents waiting at the end of the drive, congratulated them on a job well done and apologised for the dental bill.
That’s been it! As it’s a school night, the other small people will be in bed after desperately coating themselves in Freddos. So it will just be the older ones dressed ironically. My 13 year old and her friends shook themselves from their torpor and decided to go on a Halloween forage. Their costumes? Hi vis jackets.
‘Err, so what are you going as exactly?’
‘Construction workers, I think. Or the gilets jaunes.’
Without wishing to say too much about the extremely tenuous, or rather, non-existent link to Halloween, I wished them luck wondering if someone might open their door and set them to work on replacing a fence post or usher them in to read the meter. They came back and reported that there was someone wondering around as Donald Trump. The comeback is scarily real.
My own Halloween foray as a child was pathetic in the extreme. It was the late seventies/early eighties so you must realise that, at school, we were blasted with short educational films about every stranger being a potential kidnapper, every body of water waiting to swallow you up (even a puddle) and that most of us would die from climbing an electricity pylon. It was fraught out there. Come on, we were given mint flavoured green custard for desert, for god’s sake! As a result I went trick or treating in daylight on a Sunday afternoon because I needed to get home with sufficient time to worry about having to tackle the evil spring board and vault over the ‘horse’ in PE the next day in pants and a vest and obviously not get abducted (not in the PE lesson). Atmospheric it was not.
However, I do remember that, as a child, the trinity of Halloween, Bonfire night and Christmas were peak events following in quick succession, one heralding the next until you were fit to burst. Life was just one long art lesson.
Now it’s more like, ‘Christ will someone reorganise the calendar after centuries and space these events out a bit please.’ Everything feels like it’s at warp speed. I, and many other harassed looking parents, swept into the supermarket at lunchtime to add more treats to the treats only to find that Halloween had GONE, actually ON Halloween. Do they not realise how many people by things on the day rather than six months in advance?Christmas has been well and truly stocked since August and is now spreading through every aisle. I could construct a ball gown out of Ferrero Rocher or use After Eights as hair foils, but can I find those huge bags containing treat-sized chocolates? No! I could only feel abject pity for the parent hunting for a broomstick.
This is the first year in a long time that I’ve not decorated the house and just stuck an unadorned pumpkin outside, knowing that dotted around the local streets pumpkin artistry will be on show, worthy of the Turner Prize. Mine, the squash equivalent of a ‘meh’ shrug. Call it midlife overwhelm or general malaise, but then my middle one recounted how, at a friend’s at the weekend they all fell asleep during ‘The Exorcist!’ So, perhaps there’s something more there.
Despite me being a pumpkin grinch (excuse my seasonal mash-up there), I did rather overbuy on the treats in anticipation of the hoards. ‘You always buy too many,’ said the kids. Ah, ever the people-pleaser! I was primed to admire outfits and be generous with the treats. I felt the sparklets of excitement from the DNA of my own childhood. My perfect visitors however, remained the only ones. Perhaps my faceless pumpkin put people off. Chocolate eyeballs on the hall table admonish me: ‘Next year, could do better.’
"Oh no! Said everyone!" Those picture books haunt me to this day, Emma. Great post, thanks for making me smile on this verrrry rainy morning.