I'm expecting complaints this year. The Halloween decorations
have just gone up Chez Bolton. Each year, son and I do battle. I
prefer the traditional, harvest-home style decorations - carved
pumpkins, colourful gourds, wistful scarecrows and
brightly-polished red apples. Son, on the other hand, insists on
blood, bones and body bits.
No, honestly, it really is that way round.
He's getting older, bigger and more forceful in his arguments.
Consequently each year the pumpkins have become smaller and fewer,
whilst the body count has risen to the point where the front
windows of our house resemble the film set for the Texas Chain-Saw
Massacre.
Particularly tasteful, I think, is the black rat gnawing on a
severed finger.
Which is all very well but not everyone in our village likes
Halloween. We have, for instance, a powerful Baptist church.
I have nothing against Baptists, I add hastily: charming
people, do a huge amount of good in the village. We just don't see
eye to eye on the subject of Halloween.
In fact, so determined are they to keep the youth of the area
away from the Satanic rites and extortion of old ladies that me and
my kind champion, they organize a massive, alternative Halloween
party at which creepy stuff is replaced by faith-based songs and
games and a nutritious tea.
Team Spooky, on the other hand, offer the chance to dress as
ghouls, skeletons and witches, feast on monsters eye-balls and
worm-ridden jelly, and then, with that unforgettable frisson of
excitement and glee, to venture out, into the night, to knock on
neighbours' doors until you can barely stagger home under the
burden of chocolate.
Team Spooky gets bigger every year!
My nine year old and most of his mates rate Halloween second
only to Christmas and far superior to birthdays. Frankly, I don't
blame them. I would have adored the chance to Trick or Treat as a
child and I have little doubt the annual evenings he spends
wandering the village lanes, torch in hand, will be among his most
lasting memories of childhood.
So the main reason I love Halloween is that my son and his
friends genuinely adore it. They have huge fun and the people on
whose doors we knock (always warned in advance) seem genuinely
pleased to see us.
The other reason is that since coming out of the closet as a
crime writer, I feel duty bound to be a bit dark. It's
practically expected of me.
So let the anti-lobby do their worst. If any of them get rowdy,
I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Only one question remains. How
best do I dress up Lupe the Lurcher as the Hound of the
Baskervilles?
NB: I suspect Mr B is on the side of the Baptists on this one.
Each year, as body parts appear in all sorts of unexpected places,
he puts his head in his hands and wonders what it might be like to
live in a normal house with a normal family.
Should have married a normal woman, shouldn't he?