Halloween

This year we were invited to a party by friends, and as we don't do the trick or treating (if you did this on our street you stand a good chance of getting your self maced or worse.)

We made a special effort on the costume front, creating a bride of dracula for the eldest, a were wolf (that looked more like a rabbit) and a freaky looking pumpkin. We stayed for two hours of organised chaos and then went home with three hyped-on-sugar-and-E-numbers children.

I was surprised at the number of houses decked out with halloween themes. Is it my imagination or has it caught on a lot more recently? It was never a big thing when I was a child, that and I went to a church school where the local vicar terrified us about the dungeon and dragons board game (I clearly remember him saying that if we played it we would summon the devil. I was nine and terrified. It took a while before I would even play snakes and ladders.)

This also stirred another memory of cleaning witch graffiti off of the church doors. I distinctly remember the day after Halloween having to clean symbols off of the big wooden doors. Apparently it was widely known and tolerated that the local witch gang used the church cemetery each halloween for their meeting. How civilized, and how very weird my childhood memories are.