not halloween? please... no...

Ugh. I bloody hate halloween.
What is this 'celebration'? What's it all about? Something to do with the eve of the somethings that had to come out and scare away the something elses and save someone or other from eternal hell... And some people throw in the word 'pagan' to be really intelligent about its origins.
Or is it just a ploy from Tesco / Sainsburys / Asda / Aldi / even Waitrose I believe (not that I shop there more than once a year because my credit card - that belongs in fact to Husband - starts to quiver and shake in my wallet) / any supermarket / corner shop / news agent to get our children to eat shit for 48 hours, wear shit for 48 hours, talk shit for 48 hours and scare the crap out every person they possibly can for at least 2 weeks in the name of Halloween?
Ask any child on the street that you pass, or your own if you are in possession; ask them, and pin them down (literally if needs be): what is this Halloween you insist on dressing up for every year? Tell me, good child, honestly what is it all about, and I will maybe let you go out and threaten to put doggy-do through old peoples' front doors if they refuse to 'treat' you for making them get off their sofas, shuffle into their moist slippers, stumble for the light, creak their door open timidly and suffer a panic attack when they see a gang of masked idiots shrieking in their face. Tell me why I should let you do this, sweet child of mine?
And the chances are they'll say, in their sweet innocence: "coz you get loads of sweets mum!"
And because I never actually listen to much of what my children say in the first place, and being the daft lilly livered brain-leached wine soaked mother that I am, I'm likely to say, as if on perma-auto-pilot (which I generally am on): "Ah, free sweets! Go on then, off you go. Rot your teeth! Scare the elderly! Just make sure no one nicks your loot on the way home! Sweet things. Oh, and I love that fake blood all over your face! Are those real guts or just sausages you've stuck to your stomach? Lovely!" And off they'll toodle, in a gang, to scare the elderly, steal their sweets, slip on turds hidden under the autumnal leaf folliage, and come home off their frigging heads.
And after we've managed to calm our little sugar-tots down, wash off the black lipstick, black nail-varnish, rinse off the strange sweet-dyes from around their cherry lips, reassure them that we promise not to eat the shit, I mean, treasure that they have come home with, after all that, AND a bedtime story... us parents limp downstairs, attack the nearest bottle, slump onto the sofa and go into the zone that parents are so familiar with.

Only to be disturbed 5minutes later by the bloody teenage hooligans who come banging on your door after the watershed demanding sweets. Bugger off!

So, a tip to you all.
Shut the curtains and make like you're out...