I've found that Holloween can make me much Fatter

Well it's that time of year again when little children will dress up in their scariest outfits and try their best to get something out of us poor pensioner. Surprisingly some children don't need to dress up at all, being horrible little monsters already.

In the old days the costumes were carefully made by our parents out of old cardboard boxes, toilet roll tubes, bits of string and anything else they could get hold of. Surely that's why we all suffered hours of John Noakes and Val Singleton on Blue Peter, "Have you got your Blue Peter Badgeeeeeeee", we all pronounce in a Yorkshire accent.

Today it's into the shops where they spend vast amounts of money on plastic masks, plastic capes and toy instruments of torture. What ever happened to using the inside of a Cornflake packet to cut out and crayon a mask. Is there an equivalent to Bah Humbug for Halloween that I can use, perhaps Bah No Humbugs.

When you reach a certain age we try and think of ways of avoiding that "Trick or Treat" stuff imported from those weird people across the Atlantic, Yanks have got a lot to answer for. The many years I've sat in the dark in my own home with the television turned down pretending nobody was home, that failed the time I shouted out "She's out, go away". I found that a full water pistol fired through the letterbox from within works well.

OK, I started to feel sorry for the little bratts going home soaking wet and have thrown myself into all that is required. Days before I went out and purchased 24 bags of sweets and tipped them into a large bowl and sat in the porch as it began to get dark. My pointed hat, black cloak and green face would scare the life out of them I thought. Unfortunately by midnight nobody had turned up, half the sweets had been consumed and the green dye on my face wouldn't come off. The next day the balance of the sweets had all gone and I wasn't sure whether the face had stayed green through all those calories I had eaten or just feeling as sick as a parrot.