Halloween
It’s bloody well started. I arrived home an hour ago and Mrs Longrider had to move the car so that I could get the bike down the drive. Barely had I managed to get through the door and Mrs Longrider was still shunting the Clio, than a crowd of kids dressed in the customary regalia for the season accompanied by one of their mothers rang the doorbell demanding “trick or treat”.
Trick or treat, my arse. If an adult walked into someone’s property and started some preamble about how nice it was and how unfortunate it would be if “something happened to it”, PC Plod would be feeling their shoulder pretty pronto. Trick or treat is extortion dressed up as a children’s game. It is as unethical as the protection racket and I refuse to countenance it.
Add to my utter abhorrence of the principle, disturbing me when I still have one foot in my leggings, the phone is ringing and I’ve barely got through the door is hardly conducive to a favourable response. Mother’s snotty remarks inferring that Mrs Longrider and I are of the grumpy old men ilk, may be accurate, but is pretty rich from someone who has walked uninvited onto our property and whose children have just engaged in making demands with menaces.
No, I don’t like trick or treat and it is an American import that we could well do without.
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Comment by John
# November 1, 2006,
‘American import’. Don’t worry, there will be another one on the way soon. BTW I didn’t get any little bleeders knocking on my door. They must have read my post.
Pingback by Longrider » That Time of the Year
# November 5, 2006,
[...] I know I’ve ranted on this before, but I’m going to again. We’ve just been plagued by the truly egregious trick or treat brigade. Not content with thrusting their pleasures on those who do not appreciate them on one night of the year, we’ve had night after night of whizzes and bangs that are more akin to the Flanders trenches than urban Bristol. I detest fireworks. If others enjoy them, well, that’s fine, but why should I have to put up with the incessant bangs and pops? November the fifth lasts for one night – at least it did the last time I looked at a calendar. But, no, we have to have the best part of two weeks of this crap, making me jump every time a loud bang goes off outside the window. [...]