Hauntingly wonderful memories

J I FELT so sad on Halloween that I made Richard drive me around the neighbourhood so I could see the astonishingly elaborate displays of ghosts, monsters and werewolves in people’s front gardens. It was dazzling, a bit like going to see the Christmas lights in Oxford Street, but with illuminated skeletons instead of angels.

Richard thought I’d gone a bit mad. “This is weird – you don’t normally do this. What’s up with you?”

All I knew was I’d been gripped by a sudden violent nostalgia. I used to love Halloween when our children were small. It was the first big autumn spectacular, the first stop along the magic path which led to Christmas via bonfire night.

We lived in Manchester then, on a wonderful road with a park at the end and a wide grass verge running down the middle. It was full of young families and we crowded into each other’s houses on the winter festival nights, chilli con carne bubbling in the kitchens, hot punch and baked potatoes in the gardens, treacle toffee, parkin and sparklers around the bonfire.

On Halloween the road was full of feverish little vampires and their watchful parents, while neighbours stood on front porches handing out sweets to the children and glasses of wine to the mums and dads.

There were carol singers on Christmas Eve, mince pies and mulled wine with the folk next door, and always the magic of happy children quivering with excitement as they waited for Santa.

Those were the happiest days of my life, and I suppose what hit me this week was an acute case of empty-nest syndrome.This getting older stuff ain’t for sissies, as Bette Davis said, though I doubt she had Halloween in mind.

But you can’t turn back time; all you can do is make more memories for the future.

And when I got back from my nostalgia-haunted ghost tour, there was a present waiting for me on the sofa: the most adorable little batgirl I’d ever seen. My tiny new granddaughter, left, making her Halloween debut.

Happy bonfire night. Make new memories.