‘Trick or treat!’

‘I’ll have a treat, please.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I’ll have a treat, please,’ I repeated, holding out my hand.

‘But . . . erm . . . we ain’t got any.’ He looked around rather dejectedly at his small cohorts dressed as witches, ghouls and zombies and shook his head. They all shrugged in unison.

‘You didn’t come prepared? You haven’t properly thought this through, have you?’

‘What?’

‘I’m just pulling your leg. When you said “Trick or treat” I thought you were . . . never mind. Let’s just say I never like to miss a comedy open goal when it’s presented to me. Ha ha.’

‘You’re weird. I’m telling my mum.’

I did have a treat in the end: an early night and twenty pages of John O’Farrell’s An Utterly Impartial History of Britain.

Rock ‘n’ roll, eh?

Pranksters removed my front gate from its hinges last night. When I left the house this morning it was lying by the side of the road about three doors down. There was also a large pile of what looked suspiciously like human faeces outside my front door, though I suppose it could just as easily have come from the bowels of one of the local stray dogs or even Satan himself.

Apparently, in some parts of the UK, the night before Halloween is called Mischief Night. My neighbour Susan was telling me that it is an occasion for underprivileged children to turn feral and to roam the streets in packs. They go from house to house causing havoc by smashing windows, painting obscene slogans on cars, stealing garden gnomes, shitting in people’s yards and separating gates from their hinges.

It was my naive understanding that children – who I think should be banned in this country – only indulged in these kinds of disagreeable activities tonight, on All Hallows Eve. But what do I know?

I fully expect the house to receive a comprehensive egging this evening. I wouldn’t mind so much – youngsters do need to let off steam somehow – but the congealed albumen and yolk is so tricky to remove the next day. I do so enjoy this time of year.

On the Fantastic hi-fi today:
Squeeze – East Side Story

Once again, the filthy urchins of the parish have outdone themselves.

When they turned up at the house last night, they had not even bothered to dress up in the appropriate Halloween costumes or masks. ‘Trick or treat!’ came the inevitable demand.

They were actually shouting at the window because I was pretending that I wasn’t at home. They must have seen me peeping at them through the net curtains, however, because one of them seemed to be looking me directly in the eye. He had an unfortunate twitch in one of his beady, pig-like peepers that made it look as if he were winking at me. ‘You and I know something they do not,’ he seemed to be intimating.

Then I noticed that one of the group was lying slumped in an old wheelbarrow that the others were obviously pushing around with them as they went from door to door. Deformed and inert, the sight of the little body worried me. I thought that perhaps one of them had suffered some kind of epileptic seizure and had collapsed; and because his fellow beggars did not want him to feel left out, they had bravely elected to carry him around with them for the remainder of the evening whilst they went about their difficult work. I assumed – somewhat romantically, I admit – that they were transporting their fallen comrade around in the makeshift perambulator as a noble gesture of defiance against the rest of the village. Concerned for the welfare of the unfortunate child, I opened the door and pointed at the little body. ‘What is wrong with your friend?’ I asked. ‘Is he all right?’

‘Penny for the Guy!’ one of them blurted out as quickly as his scabby little mouth would allow.

You can imagine my reaction. How I wish I had managed to find someone willing to sell me a Taser: I keep looking.

I fully expect to next week have more young beggars at the door with their badly made Guy Fawkes’s in various shopping trolleys and pushchairs shouting Penny for the Guy! and singing Christmas carols in various awkward, augmented keys.

I don’t believe it! There is still more than a week to go to Halloween, yet premature junior beggars in ridiculous costumes are still knocking on my door demanding that I give things to them.

Last night, a gaggle of scruffy little urchins arrived carrying specially designed pumpkin-orange buckets with swirly black ghosts printed on them. The deep receptacles looked as though they could hold a lot of treats. Some enterprising manufacturer of cheap plastic rubbish is making a lot of money this year.

I had given in to my better judgement earlier in the week and bought a packet of Custard Creams from the local Spend and Save (a supermarket for common people) to hand out to the brighter local children who had learned to use politeness when robbing you with threats. However, when I offered one of the delicious biscuits to a tiny boy with a runny nose who looked like he could have done with a good meal, he looked at me in earnest confusion and said, ‘Um, no thanks.’ I was flabbergasted.

One of his companions who was slightly older and much uglier – he looked like his parents often left him to play outside in the road, chasing parked cars with his face – stared at me in disgust and shook his head slowly as if to imply that I had committed some despicable act against humanity. I considered myself lucky to escape a serious egging; I fancy they felt rather sorry for me.

This morning, I have been searching the internet for a company that will sell me a Taser. When I get the inevitable knocks on the door later this week, I plan to leap out and zap the little bastards.

We had the season’s first trick-or-treaters at the house yesterday. They seem to arrive earlier and earlier every year. The 31st of October is still over two weeks away but there they were at the door with their plastic masks and little hands held out demanding gratuities.

One of the begging children last night was a boy who seemed too old to be indulging in such an activity. At fourteen or fifteen years-old, he was perhaps the others’ pimp or evil gangmaster. He had elected to not wear any disguise and I was able to study his features carefully. His face looked like a slapped arse, as we say around these parts, and by the intense and threatening way he was staring at me, I immediately formed the opinion that he would more than likely go on to develop various unwholesome sexual proclivities in later life.

Why the peculiarly American trend of trick-or-treating has become such a popular one in this country is puzzling to me. There must of course be economic and commercial reasons for it to do so, but the actual customs and social traditions of Halloween appear lost or buried. This morning, I awoke having slept badly, as if my subconscious had been working overtime during the night, trying to solve this arresting conundrum.

One of the local newsagents has taken to selling big purple signs that homeowners can place in a conspicuous position on their property. In bold orange lettering they bear the legend, No Trick or Treat Here, Please. However, to display such a thing in one’s window is madness, surely: it invites extensive egg-throwing and the posting of dog excrement through one’s letterbox on a massive scale.

I have adopted the simple strategy of not answering the door when called upon to do so by these irritating junior nuisances but last night I was caught off guard by their premature arrival. I was, of course, more than able to improvise.

‘Trick or treat?’ one of them demanded.

‘Treat, please,’ I said.

‘What?’ came the bewildered reply.

‘I’ll have a treat, please.’ They looked at each other in utter confusion.

‘We haven’t got any. Sorry,’ the smallest of them said.

I think I heard him weeping as they trundled off down the road.