3rd November, 2006

If there is one week I look forward to getting behind me each year it is this one. Halloween. Yugh. Scooping out pumpkins is a disgusting task in itself, and one that is invariably ultimately futile and pointless as increasingly large chunks of both your fingers and the pumpkin shell are carved out in an effort to attain some form of symmetry. The resultant gaping holes of course mean that the candles you place inside it are extinguished by a howling gale seconds after you have eventually managed to get all three simultaneously lit. The only upside of this is that in theory fewer of the marauding hordes of grasping, sugar frenzied kids are attracted to your front door. But still they come and when your stache of Drumsticks and Black Jacks has been exhausted you spend the rest of the evening cowering at the back of the house in fear of rotten eggs and flour bombs - in the best case - being shoved through the letter box as reprisal for leaving said mob an apple or two instead of E numbers. Newnham in Cambridge is a pleasant enough little enclave for most of the year. On Halloween though it resembles a Parisian suburb. And talking of bonfires, the week's misery is not quite over. I have to spend the next two evenings shivering in the cold and listening to hundreds of people going "oooooh....aaaaaah".