Halloween's Coming

(1972)

The grotesque pointed teeth and eye sockets were slowly taking shape as Dad carved carefully at the turnip, scattering pieces of it all over the Formica topped table, with the odd one or two ending up on the kitchen floor.

The bigger pieces were gathered up in a bowl for Mum’s making some sort of broth, which was a regular thing in the Shand household.

The smell was bad now and would get worse once the soup pan got going.

Gads, he thought, fit a stink!

Gary hated eating turnips and all sorts of vegetables, he preferred sweets and cakes, and was looking forward to eating the Hallowe’en cake from Strathdee’s Bakery, with the witch’s face on it later, after Teatime.

Gary was nine now, and liked Hallowe’en.

When he was five, all of four years ago, he was scared of the witches , ghosts and goblins, who were supposed to roam about the streets on Hallowe’en, but he was a big loon these days, and liked to wear Hallowe’en masks , and walk along to his friends’ houses with the neep lantern, with a wee candle burning inside to light up the eyes, and show off the grotesque teeth and generally try to scare folk.

Once in the friend’s houses, there would be dooking for apples and cake and Coke or lemonade, it was a good night, and some folk would let off fireworks in the nearby gardens, before Guy Fawkes night. Gary and his brother Alan were not allowed fireworks, as their mum and dad did not approve of them, Gary did not care as long as he could have a neep lantern on Hallowe’en Night.

Gary had a good memory, his grandma was always telling him this, and he could remember a song from Primary One, when he went to a different school, before his family moved to the new council estate on the other side of the river.

 This old school was a Victorian building, built in the 1800’s Dad had said, and you had to climb up heaps of stairs to get to their classroom.

Miss Robertson, Gary’s teacher, was good at playing the piano, and she sang songs when they got music in class, they got their Scottish songs like ‘The Wee Cooper of Fife’, with its 'nickety nackety noo noo noo' chorus, and ‘Hallowe’en’s Coming’, with its singsong chorus- a list of scary things to fire a young imagination , or not  -' Hallowe'ens Coming, Hallowe'en's coming , skeletons will be after you , witches cats and big black bats , ghosts and goblins too,' which was a bit scary when you were coming to school in the dark in ‘Daylight Saving Time’ as Dad had called it. 

Dad knew lots about lots of things and had told Gary and Alan that in folklore Hallowe’en is the night of the year when the boundary between worlds of the Living and the Dead becomes tissue thin, and it was the night before All Saint’s Day, given its correct name ‘All Hallows Eve,’ ‘hallow’ meaning holy.

Gary liked ghost stories and things like Scooby Do on TV, so Hallowe'en was his favourite night of the year, the day before his birthday on November the First. Of course, he liked Christmas Day too, but that was a very different thing altogether.

Gary’s daydreaming ended, as Dad said he was finished, and here was the neep lantern, ready to be lit, and carried along to the Donald household, where Gary’s school friend Andy Donald, and his folks were ready for the Hallowe’en visitors, the welcome ones. The ghosts, goblins, witches were duly warded off at the door.