Have Halloween in the kitchen this year
IT was only after the massive success of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 movie E.T. that British children took up the practice of trick-or-treating on Halloween.
Nowadays there are parents who did it themselves as children, and who probably think trick-or-treating is some ancient British tradition dating back to pre-Christian times.
If you look into the folkloric history, you’ll find that this is sort-oftrue in some places (though not round here), and although trick-ortreating in its present form is a definite American import, Halloween was certainly marked in Britain in former times, with things like ghost stories, games and fortune telling.
Also pumpkin lanterns, though in many parts of Britain lanterns were made not of pumpkins, but of turnips, which one would imagine are infinitely harder to carve out.
In the last 30 years or so the nature of the British Halloween has changed a fair bit, too. Between the 1990s and the early noughties the Post regularly carried stories of shaven-headed little thugs turning up at pensioners’ doors wearing fright masks and demanding treats with menaces.
One Post columnist announced one year that his solution to the problem was to present any such kids appearing at his door with chocolate-coated sprouts.
A pal of mine, braver than I’ll ever be, went the whole hog and presented them with fruit from his garden and root vegetables from his allotment. The eggs and flour were cleaned off his car easily enough, but one of the turnips left a permanent dent in the front passenger door.
At some point in recent years, though, it all got quite innocent. Nowadays all you get is adorable little kiddies in elaborate homemade costumes or, more usually, something off the shelves of Asda. They are accompanied by responsible adults, and usually only call on friends and near neighbours, so all is well.
Not this year, of course. Newspaper reports tell us that people are already emptying the supermarket shelves of Halloween tat. There might not be much in the way of trick-or-treating but it seems that Brits are determined to make a big deal of Halloween, even if they have to do it at home.
In this spirit I’ve been trawling through old local papers for suggestions for Halloween things to do at home with the kids, and have gleaned the following:
1. Your domestic Halloween ceremonies should all be held in the kitchen, which is more suitable than the living room, and more amenable to the distribution of candles and the telling of ghost stories.
2. The kitchen is also better for chucking apple peel on the floor. You know the old idea: throw the coil of peel over your shoulder and the shape it makes on the floor will reveal the initial of your future spouse.
3. Apple-bobbing.
4. One paper from the 1920s had a nice idea for a kids’ game which sounds like a goer for any rainy day. Open the larder or one of the kitchen cupboards that’s got tinned food/groceries in and look for ten seconds. Everyone then has to write down everything they’ve seen. The winner is whoever can remember the most.
5. Matchmaking? Raid the spice rack and smear a bit on each of the chaps, perfume-style. Elsewhere the girls are each assigned a particular spice, and have to go find the bloke they’re spiced up with, and then have a dance or two with them. Actually, that’s probably a non-starter this year, but doing Halloween in the kitchen does seem like a very sound idea.
Get some in!
Many thanks to those of you who have sent in your memories of National Service. As we’ll be marking the anniversary of its abolition later this year or in early January, there’s still plenty of time if anyone else fancies putting fingertips to keyboard with their recollections.
On the subject of military matters, I was recently contacted by a friend who is a metal-head and has been trying for years like some doorstep evangelist, to convert me to liking the loud, horrible rackets he loves so much.
Knowing my interest in military history he saw an opportunity to tell me all about a popular Swedish band called Sabaton Ace whose songs (if you can call them that) are all about war. Apparently they “employ historical advisors and annotate their lyric booklets with proper historical facts.”
Their one Bristol appearance to date, at the Academy, featured a tank, and some months back they made an animated Lego video for their latest single.
Say what you like about the music, but the film is astonishing, and I urge my fellow military history nuts to watch the battle of Flers Courcelette (1916) done in Lego. Turn the sound off if it hurts too much. See https://tinyurl.com/ y9agv2jh.
Legal briefs
This month was the 250th anniversary of the establishment of the Bristol Law Society, the oldest such body in England and Wales. Back in October 1770 a group of eighteen legal gentlemen in powdered wigs met up at the finest hostelry in town, the Bush Tavern on Corn Street, and decided to form an association to discuss legal matters, lobby for their profession and to pool their money to buy hideously expensive law books.
This law library was for the first few years not a room, but a sturdy wood and iron chest to which only the Society’s officers had the keys.
Between the lines, of course, this was not just a professional body, but a gentlemen’s drinking club who could rack up a mighty tavern bill with the rest of them. There are many tales to tell of this eminent organisation, whose members down the years have included some shysters as well as heroic and selfless men and women working for the greater good of the community.
There were naturally big plans to celebrate this impressive roundfigured birthday which were just as naturally kyboshed by the ‘Rona.
The Bristol Law Society has sortof celebrated, though, by offering its offices on Colston Avenue as a ‘Nightingale Court’, a temporary facility for hearing employment tribunals and criminal cases that don’t carry prison sentences. Such is the huge backlog of delayed legal cases, that several such courts have been set up across the country.
The BT article on some of Bristol’s greatest legal hero(ine)s and greatest legal scoundrels will just have to wait for some other time…