Halloween - Part 1

Halloween is coming. You can tell it's almost Halloween, because where the London air usually smells like piss and buildings, for one month it smells oddly clean and fresh. It must be the Government that do it, pumping large quantities of oxygen into the streets to balance out the car fumes.

I remember that when I was about 12, Halloween really was a holiday. Every idiot in the street dressed up as something and, depending on their age, either walked around knocking on potential paedophile's houses begging for handfulls of chewits or ran around knocking out children and setting off fireworks in doorways. Thems where the days. 

#1 Costume of choice among dick-heads

Picture if you will, me. Albeit, a lot smaller, dressed like a vampire and considerably more male looking. With me is a Mummy, Wednesday Adams, Zorro and some kid I can't remember wearing a cheap mask with a hoody. We already know it's been a good Halloween so far, because we have considerably more sweets than pieces of fruit. Most old people don't open the door, but when they do they seem to feel such a duty to children (of fear of) that they hand over whatever they have, this usually being apples, oranges or 20p coins. We are standing outside our last house of the evening. I ring the doorbell and after about half a minute, a small Chinese woman appears. She screams in delight. "You come in!" she keeps repeating to us. "Don't talk to strangers. Don't talk to strangers" loops over and over again in my head. It's true that we're taught not to talk to strangers, but in turn we were also encouraged by parents to participate in this semi-begging tradition which basically relies on the concept of talking to people you don't know. I decide that free sweets are too important, and we all go in.

"This place looks safe"

There we are, sitting on a sofa in a living room that can only be described as stagnant. There are portable wardrobes and clothes everywhere. The sound and smell of frying bacon resonates from the unseen kitchen outside. The Chinese woman is still staring at us and laughing in joy. One of us tells her "Erm, we should really get going now" But she leaves the room and calls up the stairs. "STEPHEN!" she calls, then re-enters the living room. "You stay here!" she tells us. I start to wonder if we're going to be killed. Then I begin to think it's most probable that we're going to be killed. After about 30 seconds of waiting for this Stephen character to come downstairs, I decide that we're definately going to be killed. I can sense that we're all very worried. I keep thinking to myself that in a few days there is going to be a school assembly about us, which will act as a lesson for the remaining living pupils about why it's not good to enter a strangers house. Stephen enters the room. He is a very tall, heavy set Jamaican man with dreadlocks and something behind his back. He kneels down on one knee and points a polaroid camera at us all. "Say cheese!" he grins before capturing a moment in time, where 5 terrified children sat on his now urine warm sofa, wondering if their 12 years on Earth had been wasted or not. Then they let us leave... with no sweets what-so-ever.

The last thing you smell before you die

It's an odd thing to know that somewhere, in some stranger's possession is a childhood photo of yourself. I suppose I only told that story because Halloween is a time for such things, and as it happens it is completely true. The greatest thing about Halloween is the folklore that children make for themselves. "Don't knock on that house, a registered sex offender lives there" or "Didn't you know that 10 years ago today a child was brutally murdered with a hammer down that ally-way?" Kid's can be so cute.

My road used to be full of kids running around, knocking on doors, but last year I got 1 person knock on my door, and they were putting in half the required effort at most.

I know who I blame for it

Sod.