It’s. Called. Guising. Right?
November 3, 2011 2 Comments
So, half-term, a.k.a. the Tattie Holiday has been and gone. And more importantly, Hallowe’en’s over, with all its new-fangled ‘Trick-or-Treat’ bollocks cementing itself finally (as far as I’m concerned) in Scottish culture, with hordes of hooded teenagers demanding sweets off us for the price of nothing more than donning a crap mask under their hooded top, and with the ‘foaming’ of one of my three masterpiece pumpkins by some little shite. Jokes and sing-songs were thin on the ground and I can’t help a curmudgeonly nostalgia that believes America’s got a bloody lot to answer for.
Much as my mother bemoans the loss of the happy meaning of the word ‘gay’ from common parlance, I bemoan the loss of days when small children staggered about the pavements at night-time in cardboard cut-out monstrosities or mum’s nightie held together with safety pins and wishful thinking, some dribbling ‘blood’ suspiciously similar in shade to Yardley’s ‘Cherry Bomb’ lipstick. Now you can deck your kids out as a Tesco zombie, or an irresistibly pretty, pink net pirate for half the cost of the amount of lipstick you’d have needed back then. And as for finding a cardboard box big enough to make a Rubik’s Cube these days, well, if you haven’t bought a new fridge in October you might as well forget it and kids today don’t know what that is anyway. I remember my makeshift Witch, my Queen of Hearts, my (last-minute) Cleaning Lady (WTF??) all beginning to fall apart three houses in, and I’m quite sure even the most patient of our neighbours was dismayed by my determination to complete T.S. Elliot’s ‘Skimbleshanks‘ in its entirety* before they were allowed to throw some monkey nuts and 20p my way and get me the fuck out of their house. Nowadays, however, you’re lucky to get a joint rendition of that bloody ‘Christmas-is-coming‘ rhyme before they stick their sweaty paws into your sweetie bag for a gluttonous rummage; cherry-picking the good stuff and muttering fibs about being allergic to nuts. Well, HA! I know how to deal with that particular porky:
“Aaaah, what a pity I’ve mixed the wrapperless sweeties in with the peanuts. Looks like you’ll be leaving empty-handed. Wouldn’t want your mothers to sue me when your tongue swells up like an inflated airbed. Shame. Cheerio now!”
You know, them ruddy kids take all the fun out of Hallowe’en.
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*Actually, I’ve just read that poem and am pretty sure it was only the first verse. Still bloody long though.
I laugh but the nut thing is the reason my kids never got to go guising – bit of a life and death one for us :/ We have parties instead. This year they dooked for apples in a muddy pint or six they concocted in my basin – I’ve still no been to the bottle bank with their detritus – and I’m still wiping face paint of my walls. There were a few bought costumes but the best was the homemade iPod nano.
One year when they were wee we did them a Halloween Treasure Hunt round the village and one of the clues sent them to the sweetie shop to pick up some pre-bought sweets. The wifie made every one of them (there were about 12) tell a joke or a rhyme or sing a song before she would give them their booty. I love that wifie, they were rattling through the clues and she held them up for a whole 20 minutes. And they GUISED.
Oh, you’re doing it properly. Why is it we in the suburbs have gone so US-Hallowe’en then? No sense of community I suppose. When my brother and his wife, my husband, and the four kids traipsed into RS McColls in their various costumes (my brother’s home-made caveman and associated, monosyllabic grunts was a sight to behold), the chap at the counter didn’t even blink. He certainly didn’t demand a joke before handing over the wine bottles.
(I was making dinner, in case you were wondering).
I’m worried now about the nuts in case that girl whose bluff I called wasn’t fibbing after all, and did end up in A&E…