Ah Halloween. Or Hallowe'en for all you gratuitous-apostrophe fans. For some, it conjures up images of bonfires, bobbing for apples, or harmless trick or treating. For others, it conjures up images of a large man in a jumpsuit stalking nubile babysitters with a large kitchen knife.
For some reason however, I just wasn't feeling Halloween this year. Which is suprising as, for an agnostic such as myself, it's one of the few, major non-religious festivals in the calendar.
When you're a kid, Halloween is great craic. You get to dress up and roam the streets late at night, looking frighteningly garish and trying to get what you can. Which is an unsettlingly appropriate prelude to your twenties.
I remember dressing up at the age of seven as a cross between a farmer, a witch, Dracula, Frankenstein and...Batman. With big woolly gloves. And a sword. Something for everyone there I feel. And that was my most successful year too as I remember, for not only did I come home with a bag full of chocolate, sweets and (regrettably) some fruit, but one of my neighbours had forgotten it was Halloween and gave me the nearest food item to hand. Which happened to be a coconut. Took me weeks to crack the bastard open, but hell, it was worth the effort.
As you get older however, things change: it becomes your duty to buy the sweets and endure the taunts of anonymous little bastards in Frankenstein masks. In my neck of the woods in East London, the little costumed rapscallions are particularly adorable. Trick or treat? Nope- shoot or stab. But at least the little tykes give you a choice once a year.
The alternative is to abandon your house for the night (firstly sellotaping up the letterbox from the inside o' course) and donning fancy dress to go party with kindred spirits (i.e. those who are no longer kids, but not yet parents). House parties are the best suited for this. The drawback however is that you will invariably be greeted by some snooty hostess who has spent about five hundred quid on an adult fairy costume, takes one look at your cape and moans 'oh...you haven't made an effort'. Etiquette then dictates that you look her firmly in the eye and say 'Listen Tinkerbell: I live twenty miles away, it took me two tubes and a bus to get here, and its absolutely pissing down. There's your feckin effort. Now get me a beer.'
Fancy dress parties in nightclubs are generally perilious because they invariably necessitate journeying into or around the city centre. I heard a story about a guy in Dublin who went out one year dressed as a mummy. For some reason this provoked a reaction from some gurriers on the train into town, who then proceeded to beat the crap out of him. It's funny in a way: the guy started the night wrapped up in bandages he didn't need, and ended the night needing to be wrapped up in a shitload of bandages.
So perhaps my Halloween blues will lift next year, and I'll find myself pulling on the familiar Leatherface mask, cranking up that miniature fisher-price chainsaw, and going bobbing for cider. But for now, I'm happy to have let the occassion blissfully pass me by. After all, there's Bonfire Night to look forward to. What's that, London Fire Brigade are on strike for it? Oh...
CB
For some reason however, I just wasn't feeling Halloween this year. Which is suprising as, for an agnostic such as myself, it's one of the few, major non-religious festivals in the calendar.
When you're a kid, Halloween is great craic. You get to dress up and roam the streets late at night, looking frighteningly garish and trying to get what you can. Which is an unsettlingly appropriate prelude to your twenties.
I remember dressing up at the age of seven as a cross between a farmer, a witch, Dracula, Frankenstein and...Batman. With big woolly gloves. And a sword. Something for everyone there I feel. And that was my most successful year too as I remember, for not only did I come home with a bag full of chocolate, sweets and (regrettably) some fruit, but one of my neighbours had forgotten it was Halloween and gave me the nearest food item to hand. Which happened to be a coconut. Took me weeks to crack the bastard open, but hell, it was worth the effort.
As you get older however, things change: it becomes your duty to buy the sweets and endure the taunts of anonymous little bastards in Frankenstein masks. In my neck of the woods in East London, the little costumed rapscallions are particularly adorable. Trick or treat? Nope- shoot or stab. But at least the little tykes give you a choice once a year.
The alternative is to abandon your house for the night (firstly sellotaping up the letterbox from the inside o' course) and donning fancy dress to go party with kindred spirits (i.e. those who are no longer kids, but not yet parents). House parties are the best suited for this. The drawback however is that you will invariably be greeted by some snooty hostess who has spent about five hundred quid on an adult fairy costume, takes one look at your cape and moans 'oh...you haven't made an effort'. Etiquette then dictates that you look her firmly in the eye and say 'Listen Tinkerbell: I live twenty miles away, it took me two tubes and a bus to get here, and its absolutely pissing down. There's your feckin effort. Now get me a beer.'
Fancy dress parties in nightclubs are generally perilious because they invariably necessitate journeying into or around the city centre. I heard a story about a guy in Dublin who went out one year dressed as a mummy. For some reason this provoked a reaction from some gurriers on the train into town, who then proceeded to beat the crap out of him. It's funny in a way: the guy started the night wrapped up in bandages he didn't need, and ended the night needing to be wrapped up in a shitload of bandages.
So perhaps my Halloween blues will lift next year, and I'll find myself pulling on the familiar Leatherface mask, cranking up that miniature fisher-price chainsaw, and going bobbing for cider. But for now, I'm happy to have let the occassion blissfully pass me by. After all, there's Bonfire Night to look forward to. What's that, London Fire Brigade are on strike for it? Oh...
CB
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