Trick Or Treat
I’ve just come back from Trick Or Treating – this is a sentence I never thought I’d write. As the miserable curmudgeon who laid into Ukuleles with such po-faced relish, I ought really to abhor this Uncle Sam-led distortion of our own pagan heritage and cry cultural imperialism – I won’t though, because it was bloody fantastic - I love Rock’n’Roll music and Hotdogs as well, and I’ve never met an American who voted for George W, or his dad.
Obviously I wasn’t on the knock myself, but shepherded my own little hag and her ghoul-pals through a stretch of North-West London in search of occult plunder; and, as Brucie might have said –“Didn’t They Do Well.”
As one of the older parents on duty, I still felt a frisson of shame at letting my child beg from door to door – I was brought up to believe this kind of thing should be held in reserve until absolutely necessary – mind you, if the Christmas single stiffs it will be, and it’s nice to see that she’s already an accomplished door-stepper.
Queen’s Park NW6 was, in estate-agent parlance, ‘an up and coming area, great for families’. On tonight’s evidence it has up and come…but the families are still there – and prospering – although some have turned into monsters. House after house displayed pumpkins in the window – meaning “ We do Halloween, feel free to call”. I had no idea that it was so codified – like pampas grass for swinging-halloweenies. A group of tiny horrors being greeted by grown-up ghouls with baskets of sweets was – in this instance at least, to quote John-Boy Walton – Heartwarming. Only one household – with a lighted pumpkin in the window, gave a sour response. I wished the children had eggs to pelt the dessicated-joyless rot-dwellers with. I reassured them that I would put a curse on this not so yummy-mummy and in five minutes she would explode – which cheered them up.
Crossing roads in the dark with hyper-excited under-eights, dressed like left bank existentialists with fangs and wings is rather daunting. Like a lollipop man from the Astral Plain, I stood in the middle of the road and held up a plastic glow in the dark ghost to halt traffic – it worked brilliantly – Rush hour headlights lit it hideous-green, and the cars stopped to let our diabolical procession pass - I might go on Dragon’s Den to seek funding for next year…I bet I’d get it as well – Which of them would dare not to invest – ‘Duncan, are you saying that you’d like to see kiddies flattened?’
The early evening pillage ended on a wonderfully Graham Greene-esque note.
As I loaded my daughter into the VW Witch Mobile, a stout woman with a set of pipes straight out of Badmington Horse Trials – or is it Witch Trials barked “ Oh, going back to Harlesden now?”