Halloween

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Halloween is vastly approaching, that's one of the many things I love about this time of year, there's something to look forward to every month starting with Halloween followed by Bonfire night culminating with the whole Christmas shizzle.  Oh and New Year if you buy into that drivel.

When I was a child, Halloween wasn't really much of an event unless you watched American sitcoms.

I was never allowed to go Trick or Treating despite living on a familiar estate due to The Mother viewing it as nothing short of  glorified begging.  The only time it was really celebrated so to speak was at scouts and brownies parties, dress up and games.  You may remember the kind, jam doughnuts hung on string and you had to eat it with your hands behind your back, first one to devour theirs wins.  Bobbing for apples and bobbing for sweets in icing sugar with your hands behind your back.

Granted The Mother would have the mandatory stash of Dentist hell for us to hand out should anyone be brave enough to darken our doorstep (& not fall off) Yet there was certainly no decorations and to my knowledge I have no memory of ever having a  carved pumpkin.  Oh the woes of a deprived childhood.

However it all seemed a little more wholesome back then, should we dress up for aforementioned party there was no mad dash to the supermarket or Home Bargains it was a black bin liner with a hole cut through the top for you head with tin foil stars and moons on it.  You were either a witch or a wizard in our house, the outfit was the same except the boys had a cereal box rolled into a cone and covered in a bin bag, with you guessed it....tin foil stars stuck on.  I remember the bliss one year when The Parents actually bought me a 'real' witch hat, with green hair attached to it and everything but wait, the best part, a broom! Granted it was borrowed for one night only but still.  Oh the excitement.  Other popular outfits amongst peers was ye olde bed sheet with eyes cut out or la piece de resistance, a child wrapped in bog roll as a Mummy.  Bloody brilliant.

These days Halloween just appears to be another way for shops to drain extortionate amounts of money from us in exchange for cheap looking tat.  It's all so disgustingly commercialised and yet with the current depression the country is in, we lap it all up.  Anything for an excuse to party.  Anything to escape the hard reality or a recession and murderously bad financial climate.  Yet the skinter we as a nation become, the more we seem to end up shelling out to 'feel better'.

As early as August Halloween stuff was creeping into the shops and now they're flooded with costumes,

decor, accessories, special candy and sweets, special cakes, makeup, lights and even specific treat pots to collect your stash with.

It sort of steals the fun and makes it vulgar and tacky rather than fun and tacky.

Back when I was a child, Halloween party food consisted of dyed green vol au vants and green jelly with plastic bugs in.  These days you pay triple what it would cost to make them yourself to buy them ready made with super special Halloween packaging.  Anything not to spend time doing it with your children, eh? Or else you get that super breed of mum who have the craft gene of a thousand woman who make an impressive Halloween festival at home with their own hands that quite frankly makes you just want to hit the gin even thinking about it as you look at your own wonky bat biscuits with semi transparent thin icing thrown on.

Yet due to our slightly 'Alternative' (oh how I loathe that label) nature, we're expected to be be intoxicated with the notion of Halloween since we're already more ghoul than chav.  We're obviously satanic too to boot.  So how ironic that we shy from it the most.  We're reet miserable buggers.Last year The Spawn pleaded with us to take part in it somehow, so although we didn't take them Trick or Treating (mean parents) we did carve pumpkins for the first time, ever and we let them dress up.  I take full blame for Thing One's face resembling The Crow, I had to get my kicks somehow.