Season of missed and mellow fruitfull mess

I simply forgot that it was October 31st.

In my defence there has been a very long run up, commercially inspired, for Halloween this year with merchandising and goodies taking up at least one complete aisle at the super-large Tesco in town putting it on an equal footing with Christmas, Easter and summer seasonal goods. Even the forecourt at my local garage has been punctuated with pumpkins which is a new line in sales for them.

I have even seen shop windows heavily adorned with the paraphenalia of things ghoulish and spooky and these are not gift, novelty or fancy dress emporiums but just your ordinary, termed secondary or tertiary retail outlets and services as found on most half-vacant High Street locations.

In previous years we have, as a smaller and adult family unit, strived for acceptance by purchasing, hollowing out and carving a suitably scary face in a pumpkin to be hung up in the darkened porch. This is, we were led to understand, a signal to the perambulating masses that we are going along with the Halloween theme and have stocked up with treats and goodies in readiness for callers. No one came to take advantage of our thoughtful preparations and we were left with faintly spiced pumpkin soup on our faces and a supply of high sugar content, cavity promoting and E-number infused sweets which would last us for months even with a compulsory allocation of two or three items per pocket per walk out.

So, this year we did not get too excited about the prospect of trickers and treaters crossing the threshold of the porch. There I was sat in my favourite armchair with a cup of tea when the doorbell went.

I was soon to regret not parking the car around the corner, closing the curtains, turning off all the lights and giving the overwhelming impression that no-one was at home given the steady stream of skeletons, vampires, zombies, miscellaneous monsters and pirates? over the following hours.

It was a case of a frantic search around for something to hand out to the little ones and to avoid the critical look of accompanying parents as if to say 'where have you been for the last ten weeks?'.

Fortunately my wife had a secret stash of toffees and a small mesh bag of chocolate dollar coins. With some slight of hand and careful rationing it might be possible to eke out these offerings into the buckets and bin bags thrust into our view. I did think about pursuing more of a trick based approach but could foresee problems of liability and causing potential injury and distress from buckets of water poured over unsuspecting children from the window above the front door.

As it turned out, we were still left with a few of the less palatable flavoured toffees and did not have to resort to the last resort and back up supply from the back of the kitchen cupboard which would include loose monkey nuts, bits of dried fruits, cake decorations, cooking chocolate, baking beads and nicely shaped dry pasta.

We were, by the end of the evening quite exhausted with running back and forth to answer the door.

I was almost politically incorrect when confronted by a group of vampish, flourescent dyed hair and heavily made up, teen schoolgirls but just gave the impression of being a cross between a bumbling old idiot and Leslie Phillips. The house did not get pelted with eggs so I must have got away with it.

Next, roll on Bonfire Night. Bucket of sand, fire extinguisher, safety goggles and the phone number of the Casualty Department at the ready