Halloween fears and firework jumpiness is no joke

Iam not a great fan of Halloween, as my regular reader is aware.

Indeed, for the last couple of years I’ve been giddy with relief that The Student was off doing her own thing, meaning I could fully embrace the hiding in the dark from trick or treaters stage of life.

However, I’m more worried than ever this year as I seem to be getting more pathetically scaredy the older I get.

I am now quite scared thinking about hiding away from Halloween revellers. In my own house. Which will of course be unadorned with anything at all spooky.

It’s so humiliating. Remember, I’m the sap who’s also now started blubbing during cinema trailers.

I’m seriously wondering if I’ll go back to the days of my childhood when I used to have to do a monster check of my bedroom before I could get into bed. Actually, thinking about it now, that sounds like a perfectly sensible precaution.

It’s not just Halloween that’s been worrying me lately.

I’ve also come to dread fireworks night a little more each year. I don’t mind so much on the actual date but, as we all know, people start letting off rockets ages before November 5.

My tendency to jump out of my skin on hearing a loud bang has also worsened, so I’m just waiting for the stage when I go the full puppy and try to hide under the bed on fireworks night (after checking for monsters, natch).

Given all the above, in an extremely misguided move, I went to see The Joker at the cinema recently, without giving too much thought to the consequences. No, I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking really, just went along. I won’t go into details, but suffice to say there were tears and nightmares, despite the fact that I had my scarf over my eyes for a large part of the film.

BREAKING NEWS! Just finished typing the above when all the lights went off at Penman Towers. Talk about spooky. OK, it turned out to be a blown fuse but I think you’ll agree the timing was pretty suspicious...

I seem to be getting more pathetically scaredy the older I get