Halloween Harvey Part I: "You could expect bars of Highland Toffee, a ‘canny bag of Tudor’ crisps or even a tin of Bass shandy..." by Will Nett
Samhain. Oiche Shamhna. Missy Night. Whatever. I can barely recall my first memory of Halloween – I’ve had a few bangs on the head since I was a kid – but I suspect it involved waiting for Match of the Day or Midnight Caller to finish *cue saxophone solo* so I could watch some wildly age-inappropriate horror film like… well… Halloween, Friday 13th or Child’s Play: all standard late 20th century fare for horror fans.
Whatever the content it was no less dangerous than what was happening on the other side of the net curtains in the post-Mischief Night throes of Spencerbeck, where the younger townsfolk would indulge in a sensational conflagration of Health and Safety regulations by way of preparation. This included wrapping oneself in a bin liner by way of a costume – there was no B&M or Home Bargains, this was all fields back then, so you had to make do with a ten roll of plaggy bags from David Fox’s – and attempting to hollow out a turnip using a screwdriver and a claw hammer.
On completion of this, a task similar in difficulty to drilling into the earth’s core using a spiralizer, a candle would be inserted – into the turnip – which would be sporadically relit depending on wind strength, and then carried around within inches of your new highly-flammable bin liner tabard, usually to the door of every paedophile within a mile radius.
"There was no B&M or Home Bargains, this was all fields back then..."
Scant reward was whatever candied delicacies were dished out to get rid of you.
This was often a fistful of filling-slackening Chewits or Sherbet Dips from Blayney’s ‘winey’ at the Bolckow Centre, but was largely determined by where you went knocking. In the more rarified air of the southern suburbs – Endeavour Drive and the like – you could expect bars of Highland Toffee, a ‘canny bag of Tudor’ crisps or even a tin of Bass shandy. There was a good haul to be had if you were prepared to put the miles in but we were sure to air our disapproval if we weren’t satisfied, usually with a cluster bomb of Liquorice Allsorts straight through your conservatory doors. That was in Nunthorpe. Nobody in Spencerbeck had a conservatory. All that glass in peak shitpiping season! No.
What any of this lawlessness has to do with Halloween itself I’m not sure; originally it was said to be the day on which all the spirits, spectres and sprites were given a free pass to let off steam before the pious old saints took over on November 1st. Since then, it’s been fought over by popes, protestants and plotters - most notably Guy Fawkes who at least had the foresight to set about Parliament a few days after Halloween, thus avoiding a monumental diary clash for generations thereafter.
In 1992 the street that I lived on combined the two events with a block party-cum-firework display. We didn’t get permission, instead creating a barricade of the cul-de-sac using a couple of Austin Allegros. You were either in, or out. We were in, homemade costumes de rigeur. You see there were no B&M or Home Bargains – this was all fields back then. C’mon Granddad, let’s get you back into bed, you’ve told us this story before. My costume was fashioned from no more than a few yards of bed linen, but at that age I had no grounding in the sartorial choices of the Ku Klux Klan and so inadvertently went as a Grand Wizard. Trick or sheet?
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