Bring Forth The Potato Peeler

Tunbridge Wells is a load of old pumpkins. At least it was yesterday morning, as I walked to the station, in the wake of the previous evening’s Halloween shenanigans.

Pumpkins.

Pumpkin carving has reached Olympic proportions, and must now be considered as a new and particularly aggressive strain of Competitive Dad Syndrome. I must have spent at least half an hour with Harry and Jessie during the afternoon of the 31st, proudly carving what I presumed would be the best pumpkin they had ever seen. Once complete, candles were duly inserted, lights switched off for full effect, and there it was – a premiere league carving fit for display outside our front door, ready to impress the new neighbours whilst simultaneously signalling to the evening’s barrage of sugar fuelled kids that we were “up for” some of the tricking and the treating.

Trick or treat, or “Treat” as it should now be duly re-titled, appears to have changed beyond all recognition, and bears no resemblance to it’s 1970’s relative “Give us some dosh mister, or we’ll put dogshit through your letterbox”. In fact, as a child I barely remember Halloween at all. It was always about Bonfire Night. Waiting in anticipation for my father to return home from work on Friday night with an armful of cheap fireworks, which were then ceremoniously nailed to the back garden fence. We would gather round excitedly, regardless of the fact that the display would last slightly less than 2 minutes and which was, to all intents and purposes, shit.

The only lasting memory of Halloween was a story my Grandmother used to tell me each year. Dot Maclintock would gather the grandchildren around the fireplace, bottle of warmed Guinness by her side, and tell us that if you stood in front of a mirror on the stroke of Midnight on All Saints Day, lit a candle and began to comb your hair, you would see the person you will marry staring back at you. I never tried this, and I never will –partly because it all seems like rather a lot of effort to go to, a reason perhaps why this myth will probably hold up forever, but largely because the whole business gives me the complete heebie jeebies.

And so back to the pumpkins. Let me make it clear that my pumpkin was good. Bloody good. Difficult it is though to compete with an entire scene from Harry Potter painstakingly whittled across the largest pumpkin in Kent, or the entire Simpson’s family, pet’s included, carved and hanging triumphantly from the porch of number 65. From the first house we visited to the last, and at each house in between, I had been usurped. Trounced. A can of pumpkin Whoop-Ass had been opened and handed to me, from which I had no choice but to duly sip. The new neighbours had simply neglected to inform me that this evening would turn out to be the Royal Tunbridge Wells Galactic Pumpkin Carving Finals of The Universe.
Never in the field of human pumpkins, had so many been carved by so yada yada yada.

We arrived home with bucketful’s of cheap confectionary. Pouring myself a large glass of Shiraz, I sat down at the kitchen table, face to face with our pumpkin. It was a bloody good pumpkin…

Harry bounded into the Kitchen, wired to the teeth on Haribo.

“Daddy, can we smash the pumpkin up now?”

I looked up at Harry… "Get the rolling pin.”