This year, Hallowe’en is scarier than ever
Hallowe’en is presenting a devilish challenge at Woods Towers in 2020, what with a deadly pandemic raging beyond the front door.
I can’t be alone in wondering just where to pitch the fear factor? Too high, and our already pounding hearts will surely give out. Too low, and the disappointed 12-year-old – her recent birthday party already a corona casualty – may well dream up ghoulish ways to dispatch us in our beds.
Despite what Boris says, trick or treating is off. Rightly or wrongly – but entirely understandably – none of the neighbours is willing to risk opening the door to the Grim Reaper, however winsome, in the current climate. They’ve got enough undead anxieties to be going on with. I must regretfully concur; the usual hubble and bubble just feels like toil and trouble.
I used to relish the mayhem and mischief of corpses and skeletons roaming the streets. I have a rather splendid severed arm I picked up in a car boot sale, and genuinely looked forward to the horror its annual outing precipitates. But come Saturday, my gruesome limb won’t be reducing little children to hysterical tears as it falls out my sleeve into the sweetie bowl, sending up a spray of fake blood and a howl of anguish. So it’s just us indoors apple-bobbing with two daughters, eating revolting green food by candlelight, squabbling over which film hits just the right note of terror.
I hope terrestrial TV has something suitably creepy that won’t make me throw up my foam Dracula teeth. BBC Two is showing Poltergeist, while Film 4 has Halloween. I’ve never seen either, but what’s this? At 10.45pm? Who on eart earth is still awake at that time these d days. I’ve had so many early nights since March that the 10 10pm pub curfew feels like a late late-night extension, and I don don’t even know if Question Time Tim still exists. Maybe it’s Sa Satan’s way of saying I sh should let the kids run riot, wa watch whatever gruesome mo movie they want, and to hell wit with the blood-curdling cons consequences. Maybe. But my vote’ vote’s for Scooby-doo on Zombie Island. Islan Who’s with me?