This year’s Halloween portents are very scary indeed

Last year we cracked it at Halloween. A tip-off had led us to a new and fancy estate at the edge of town – the kind of place where the cars are even bigger than the recently constructed garages.

The kids, dressed in their hideous finery and with scary buckets in hand, went from one tightly packed executive home to the next, revelling in the artful decorations and marvelling at the vast quantities of sweets and other goodies on offer.

After a mere half hour of the easiest trick or treating you could wish for, we hopped in the car and returned to our own road – dour by comparison – to examine the spooky spoils. There was enough to last till Christmas, I thought. Ho, ho, ho; as if.

This time around, I wondered if my daughter – nearly 14 – would still be interested in the whole Halloween shenanigans, but there appears to be significant determination to go all in. There has been talk of fancy-dress outfits and of returning to the scene of last year’s bounty. I have to remind myself that Halloween is apparently now an event for people of every age (even those old enough to know better).

The portents for a successful All Hallows’ Eve, however, seem mixed. My son’s recent tooth filling may not have dimmed his enthusiasm for sugar, but it has certainly made me question the wisdom of another trip to candy estate. And then there has been the issue of the pumpkins.

Last weekend, my daughter went to a friend’s house for some lantern-carving fun. Nice for her, but my son was outraged because he wasn’t to be included – “not fair!” being his current motto. I spent most of the afternoon trying to convince him that really this wasn’t a reasonable attitude and that, in any case, we’d get him his own pumpkin nearer to the big day. It failed to quell the grumbling.

More successful in that regard was my daughter’s return, arriving home as she did with a pumpkin into which she had attempted to carve the face of a horse, for reasons unspecified. It was a decent effort, although had she told me it was the face of Jimmy Hill, I’d have also believed it. However, the effect had been undermined by a catastrophic accident that had left the pumpkin in three large pieces. Showing the typical quick-thinking of a bunch of 13-year-olds, my daughter and her friends had sought to repair the damage with a glue gun.

My son laughed and immediately felt better. My daughter also saw the funny side, until a couple of days later when an attempt to move the pumpkin caused it to fall apart once again. The wailing that ensued was equal to the wild cackling of an entire witches’ coven.

In the meantime – on a trip to his grandparents – my son had managed to do some carving of his own, going for a classic face design which ended up more baffled than scary. The kids were now even, or so I thought. But it then turned out my daughter had gone one-up again, when another pal came round for yet more Halloween prep.

Thankfully, to avoid the inevitable cries of injustice, my wife had bought a back-up pumpkin for the boy to carve: a second equaliser. Yet by the time he had drawn up a complicated design on paper, involving the Tottenham Hotspur badge of all things, the vegetable (or fruit, if you prefer) had clearly passed its best, with the skin on one side beginning to rot. Cue more frightening cries.

Eventually, we convinced him that the other side of the pumpkin was still stable enough to take a knife, even if the Spurs cockerel might be overly ambitious. His surprising response was to announce that he was going to carve the outline of five bananas in lieu of a face. Not exactly spooky, but certainly startling.

As Halloween approaches, we therefore find ourselves in the enviable position of having on our front doorstep the four pumpkins of the apocalypse: horseface, baffled-boy, rotten banana-eyes and star-gazer. It’s been a trick-filled horror show from start to finish.

Now, please bring on some treats.