Don’t be scared, a cry will do you good

It was a perfect storm of sentimentality andcake

Phew! It’s all over. The teenagers demanding sweeties for wearing a hoodie, small children with surprisingly large hands when it comes to scooping treats from a bowl, and pumpkins that smell rotten as soon as you’ve carved them. I admit it – I hate Halloween. Now that The Teenager goes off to do her own thing to mark the scary shenanigans, I no longer have to go along with it and can do the full bah humbug.

Huddling in the dark so no pesky kids call is actually rather thrillingly spooky.

My regular reader knows that I’m very easily spooked, so that’s about the right level of peril for me. I’m not even keen on the Strictly Halloween special.

Usually I have to wait until Halloween is over so that I can indulge in my favourite pre-Christmas pastime of blubbing in a sentimental and frankly embarrassing fashion over anything from adverts to choirs.

However, this year the licence to blub came early, thanks to the last ever final of the Great British Bake Off on the BBC.

It was a perfect storm of sentimentality and cake, giving viewers like me licence to indulge ourselves.

At Penman Towers, there was double the opportunity for a good blub as soon as the cry went up: “Oh no! Candice has a pug!”

For it is a scientific fact that cute dogs added into the general mix of sentimentality can guarantee at least five minutes’ extra crying time.

Although Candice’s win wasn’t as emotional as Nadiya’s the previous year, when her speech to camera left most of the country in tears, it was poignant as we knew it was the last final on the Beeb.

For those of us who have stuck with it since the first series – and even on occasion been stirred to make a cake as a result – it was a very difficult goodbye.

On the plus side, though, it reminded me how lovely and cathartic it is to have a good cry.

For this reason, I may even start my guaranteed pre-Christmas tearjerker film viewing earlier than usual.

It’s a Wonderful Life anyone? Tissue?