It is Hallowe'en. I went to the supermarket earlier and saw numerous people dressed in ghost costumes, shirts covered with fake blood, and best of all, a man with a plastic hand stuck to his shoulder.
Has Hallowe'en always been this important? When I was little, we used to celebrate Bonfire Night, an enjoyable but confusing festival. It has taken me about 30 years to understand what it commemorates and I have come to the conclusion that it really demands quite a lot of historical knowledge, far more than I had at the tender age of six or seven.
I remember going to a bonfire on the playing field down the road from our house and an enormous bonfire, and someone giving me some amazing treacly bonfire toffee, and watching the guy burn, and wondering why it was OK to celebrate someone being burned alive and whether we should feel sorry for him (that's the awkward sort of kid I was). I remember feeling rather cold and terribly excited because there were free sparklers. In other years we would go over to a science park near where we lived where they had an even more enormous bonfire and fantastic fireworks set off by scientists. I think a lot of children go along with things without understanding what they really mean; it's only when you look back that it makes sense. Well, sometimes. Although bear in mind that I come from somewhere where the immortal words "Crusty three weeks shags faggots" were painted in very large white letters on the bus shelter for about ten years, like some demented, ugly haiku.
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