HMS Pinafore Dress

I used to know quite a few clever youthfuls  who worked in advertising. I had to be careful when drawing up party lists, because there could sometimes be ideological clashes between the bright young things of Adland, and people who thought it unacceptable to project a huge Coca-Cola advert onto the Moon. I don't really mind it much myself. I look at the pretty pictures and move on. Unless a really good new mascara seems to be promised. Advert people don't care for THAT attitude at all..it's as irritating for them as is the "pornography just bores me" school of thought. One of my dear friends who was something very important in a company with a string of names and initials once said to me "If you don't see the point of an advert, it wasn't aimed at you".
As ever, the best thing to do with an irritant is to move away from it, and I have a great many crossed-out "Home"addresses to prove it. However, sometimes one becomes exposed by ill luck or circumstance, to a television set which is not one's own and therefore it is not permissable to hurl it from a high window with a curse. Distressing items  can accidentally swim into one's normally highly filtered limpid pool. I do find it difficult to love the Littlewood's Christmas Advertisement in the spirit of Christian charity which I realise is expected of me by the vicar. It's not the open exhortation to ALL Mothers to buy everything in the world from Littlewoods with credit cards that should have been frozen in the compartment bit of the fridge designed for that purpose, and the lack of male parents (WHY are Fathers For Justice not dressing up as Spiderman and storming Littlewood's HQ at this appalling slight?),and that perfectly foul little girl with glasses and facepaint. It's the rapping that gets to me. There should NEVER be children rapping, it must be confined to those with pubic hair or the whole point is lost.
But the one that really gets to me is the one with Linda Bellingham. Now I used to see this perfectly pleasant woman around when I was a Crouchender, as was she.She always dressed pleasingly,in a very North London Boho way. However, she has now sold her soul to a catalogue called "Isme". They have an utterly revolting commercial on the television, the burden of whose song is that mad menopausal crones get even madder at Christmas (grain of truth, there is always one..) and are therefore only too likely to hit the cooking sherry and stagger round the high street, buying sequinned leggings and midriff-throttling dresses in shiny red nylon. They can escape this fate, (and thereby,it is suggested, find themselves at the mercy of an unshaven toyboy who will glower darkly on their sofa and eat all their After-Eights in tractor-like, mechanical shovelling motions,by the way),only by purchasing matronly garments in "jewel colours" with suitable draped necklines and sleeves cunningly fashioned to accommodate the vast swoops of dinner-lady underarms that afflict us all when someone blows a whistle somewhere around our fiftieth birthdays.
Oh God spare us from A-line "fit and flare" and dipped hemlines. Did Joan Crawford slip into an easy-to-wear draped horror frock when she reached her foxy fifties? No,she did not;she ramped up the eyebrows and the tailoring. I met a picturesque woman the other evening, who had it seemed, recently turned forty and become invisible,or so she said.I could see her perfectly well, I reassured her. "No!" she ejaculated, almost causing me to loosen my grip on my Big Dirty Red. "Men! They just don't see you after a certain age". I have mentioned this before, but it is worth repeating. If someone ignores you because you do not fit in with their addled and poisoned idea of pulchritude, you have had a Lucky Escape, and should rejoice. I used to be whistled at by builders and van drivers and roadmenders. Now, I am rarely the object of that kind of attention. This is not due to my suddenly becoming a hag,it is because I now give every impression that I will stride up to these miscreants and shake their ladders viciously, delivering invective in crisp tones,rather than slinking away or blushing. And this impression is accurate.
Differing tribes see the same landscape differently. Another darling friend once pointed out that his teenagers saw threats, portents, hazards and landmarks in their own neighbourhoods which are invisible to the adult negotiating the exact same territory. We see a junction or a takeaway, they see a postcode boundary likely to end in a stabbing . And so it is with what might be referred to as street hassle, as Lou Reed called it.Although it would be a foolhardy builder who whistled at Lou these days. We are all invisible to teenagers, but charity collectors can see us several miles away. It is a matter of perspective. However, I will not be trussed up in stretch velvet with a "flattering" bolero at this time of year or any other. I shall wear what I damn well please and do as I damn well like. That is the divine blessing of advancing age, and I intend to get the maximum fun from it while I am still spry enough to dodge the ISME catalogue and run from a rattler of tins into the nearest Low Dive. Coming?

Please Hold...For All Eternity.

I have been babysitting. Well, they aren't,  strictly speaking , babies, and I didn't really sit on them. The mites belong to my charming friends on the Wirral. The boy is eleven, and may be a genius. The girl is four and either heading for international superstardom, or they will re-introduce the death penalty just for her. It could go either way at present. There is also a low-maintenance fish, not even given to that disconcerting habit of leaping out of the bowl gasping and flailing,which I have encountered in other, rowdier fish; and which always causes me to have palpitations. In fact,   after suicidal fish has been restored to bowl or tank, it recovers itself immediately, and continues to calmly circle the bowl once more, with an expression of "What?" on its face more usually seen in the male teenager. I, on the other hand, am a wreck, and need nicotine and strong coffee before becoming soignee again.Which proves, to my great relief, that I am a more sensitive and evolved creature than a goldfish.It's not much to show for decades of higher education, but it is SOMETHING.
Anyway, the intellect of even the most limited member of the Plankton family;the one that all the other Planktons sigh over and say "Well, he's got a Very Nice Nature", effortlessly soars above that of people who deise telephone systems used  by banks. As I discovered when, thinking to myself " I am babysitting. My favourite television programme "The Walking Dead", has yet to start. I have read everything in the house which does not concern Peppa Pig or advanced calculus.I shall ring my bank, who offer a "24/7 service", and discuss some amusing discrepancies which I have noted on my statement". Why did I do this, and not choose instead to attack my nose with a cheesegrater? The relaxation thus afforded would  have been of a superior quality.
First of all, they refused to believe who I was. I  was obliged to prove this by producing a series of numbers,which I had previously selected without telling myself what they were.  To make it more interesting, they were to be produced  in a different order from anything that might have made any sense.My memorable name wasn't, it appeared. By the end of this process, I had locked myself out of my bank account, possibly for ever. I could only get it back by ringing an expensive-sounding helpline, who asked me for a further series of numbers.
 I gave up, resolving to get the eleven-year-old maths genius on it the next morning. As I had some life left  to kill, I then tried to call Royal Mail. Since moving into Downturn Abbey, I have only occasionally received post,and that mostly of an unwelcome nature.It seems that my bijou apartment has not been recognised on their system. It is small,but not that small.  I do not live, for instance, in an acorn. After having held the telephone receiver against my ear for so long that both became white-hot, I was repeatedly advised by a Royal Mail Voice to not bother, and to jolly well use the website instead, as that would be cheaper for them. I am not entirely a Luddite. I gave it a go. However, my complaint was recorded on an unconvincing-looking  form.. even as I clicked on the telling word "Submit", I had the strong impression that I had been electronically ignored.
After several more postless days, I tried again, to find that the website directed me to the telephone number that directed me to the website.  Heigh-ho, I will call the number of my local sorting office, so I will. They have a more fundamentalist approach to protect themselves from the public; they simply do not answer the phone. I imagine one of the burlier sorting men sits on it, possibly enjoying the vibration, as it rings its silly head off.

So if any of you have been wondering where I have been, I have been doing that.But I am better now, and resolved in future only to engage in transactions where I can speak to a human in real time,preferably face-to-face. Jean-Paul Grump famously observed that "Hell is other people". Oh, I KNOW, Jean-Paul, you lovable old French existentialist. But all our "Utilities" and such-like seem determined to remove them from the business model, so I think we should resist,if only out of perversity. If we collectively insist on dealing with people and people alone, we might get some back in jobs again one day,and get a better quality of irritation.

Getting Wiggy With It

I have a fairly impressive selection of wigs. This is because I do showbizzy things from time to time. Wigs are a boon and a blessing. On one occasion, the wig was the only thing that saved me from an angry mob. On quieter days, they are so useful for disguising the fact that I have done something experimentally teenage with my hair that has not quite come off. I am astounded that the hair has not come off too, I have put everything on it but napalm.
Nature has been kind enough to give me the tonsorial equivalent of leylandii, or Japanese Knotweed. It is cheerfully resistant to all my vandalism. If I ever allowed the natural colour to surface, which is highly unlikely, it would now be grey. I was born, as I have mentioned, in possession of a thick black thatch similar to that sported by Lou Costello. As the nuns who surrounded my cradle in those first infant days backed away nervously, a Midwife Nun strode bravely forward to say " That will fall out,in a day or two". And it did, to be replaced by red fizzy curls. Apparently babies often arrive in wigs, the old wives tale being that this is what gives one heartburn when pregnant. Red hair was popularly supposed to be the Mark of Satan. Maybe I had put the wig on in the womb, to avoid being exposed on a hillside or similiar? Hair loomed in my childhood, the stuff of myth and legend. You ate crusts to make it wavy, it was washed in Durbac soap to ward off nits,and if it grew too long, it sapped your strength.The most mysterious hair-related thing was the incident affecting our local GPs, Doctors Ronald and Neville Riley, who were identical twins. An unusual phemonenon, even in Fazackerley,twin doctors. They resisted admirably the undoubted temptation to play identity-swopping tricks on their patients, being sober, kind, and unfailingly forbearing men. They put up with my childish antics; like the time when I painted red dots all over myself in an attempt to present with chickenpox, but had fallen prey to artistic over-enthusiasm and gone on to paint a large red eye around my navel, a symptom generally not typically seen in the diagnosis of a pox of any kind. One day Dr Neville awoke to find his hair curled around his pillow like a small vole. He had fallen victim to a sudden onset attack of alopecia, and was from that day forward, as bald as any coot you care to mention. But no-one in Fazackerley had any further trouble telling them apart.
I used to have hair I could sit on ( but don't we all,post-puberty?),like an Edwardian dirty postcard. It streamed down my back in thick, rippling auburn waves. This was less fun than you might think. For one thing, a strong wind and sticky lipgloss instantly transformed me into Cousin It. For another, it attracted strange people on the bus. I dozed off on a long coach journey back to University one Sunday evening, and awoke to find a large middle-aged lady combing it and singing hymns. Nasty girls would put chewing gum
 in it. It got caught in doors and wound around people's coat buttons. New Year's Eve, 1979, I suddenly got bored with it. So I went out and bought two bottles of raw peroxide,and poured them into the bath. This didn't seem adequate, so I added some household bleach. Then I lowered my hair into the fizzing potion, and swished it about a bit, using the nailbrush to go round the edges.After a few minutes, I noticed that some of it seemed to be breaking off,and that my head was burning.. After an hour's rinsing, a whole bottle of conditioner,and some crying, I was left with an oddly glowing halo in radioactive orange and budgie yellow. But I had a party to go to, so I decided to brazen it out. I got my Mum's heated rollers out, and pinned the straw-textured mess up with them. And had a sherry and some Player's No.6, while it dried off. By the time I had finshed both the bottle and the packet, I had convinced myself that it would actually look rather Jean Harlow-esque to have a head of jaffa-coloured ringlets. And to smell like a  recently-scrubbed public toilet.  When the time came to unroll the rollers, they wouldn't unroll.   I ended up cutting them out of my hair with nail scissors.Have you ever seen the original German illustration on the cover of "Struwelpetter"? Well,it looked like that. I remember the taxidriver bent double laughing at me as he dropped me off at the party.I don't remember very much at all after that. But I started the 80's resembling a High-viz badger. It took a while for the decade to catch up with my courageous early-adopting of big stupid hair.
Then there was my Swan Vesta period, where I was very thin and had a short red crop...after that, I went for a brushed back quiff with alarming spikes. There followed a series of increasingly dreadful styles, until I was adopted by a hairdresser who bawled at me if I so much as reached a fingertip up to it myself. Since then, and under his jurisdiction, I have behaved myself around scissors and dye. But the urge for a sudden change of look still emerges, every now and again.. Hence wigs. And of course my dear friends know I am a false hair source, so I am often asked if one of them can borrow from my wig library, for fancy dress or bamboozlement purposes.

So the wig that saved my life, or at least spared me the attentions of a drunken and dissatisfied audience..I was putting on a cabaret show for New Year's Eve. The bill was a stunner, the tickets were sold, and I was compering, dressed as Mummy Christmas, in a white-blonde Debbie Harry bobbed wig. And then gremlins struck. The sound system decided to expire. The management consisted of a fretful young woman who didn't really want us there anyway, and couldn't have cared less.She told us that she "Was Food", and I started to agree. For sharks, perhaps? To cut a long and painful tale short, these punters had paid handsomely for a sparkling cabaret.What they got was several attractively presented and no doubt fascinating acts, miming and squeaking, and then yelling until their throats were raw, all unheard.
I observed some very hostile body language. As a responsible and mature professional, I did the only possible thing.I whipped my wig off, put my specs on, hid under a large coat, and legged it . Fortunately some friends were driving through Liverpool trying to find a pub that didn't shut firmly at 9pm, and I hurled myself gratefully into the get-away vehicle.
By 3am on New Year's Day, I was finding it funny, and everyone else was trying on my wig, first checking that no-one from Oxton had been in the audience and had tracked us home.
So let's hear it for wigs. And toupes, too.After all, once you have reproduced, Nature doesn't give a stuff if you are lynched by a mob, but synthetic hair will save you every time.

Good Mousekeeping

I have a little bit of form with mice. My first mouse was given to me, with several expressed reservations and a cage,by my Grandfather. I was eight, it was probably about sixteen in mouse years. The mouse was white, and soon became grubby. So I decided to give it a bath. In the bath. Mice can swim, up to a point. However, the poor thing got cramp,and no wonder, suddenly being dropped in the equivalent of the Channel. It drew its legs up, and I thought they had come off. Panicking, I fished it out and ran bawling to Mum "My mouse's legs have come off...."
She sighed,and put the oven on. The David Walliams of the mouse world was wrapped in cotton wool, fed brandy through an eye-dropper, and popped into the oven on a low light.My brother, then three, gazed with wide-eyed horror.."Mum's cooking a mouse!"
It was happily dry and deeply pissed within minutes, so we watched it staggering round the cage until it passed out on the straw.We've all been there.
The trouble with mice is that they are not natural singletons. Where you see mouse, there will be mice. A large and boisterous family lived with me in Huskisson St. They were, admittedly, given to weeing on everything, but then so had my previous flatmates been, and the mice were prettier. As my food cupboards contained very little to detain them, they jilted me and moved next door. Next door were vegetarian, and given to big brown paper bags full of dried beans and alfafa. Mousie Heaven.
When I left home, my Mother took up with mice, in a big way. She also branched out into hamsters and guinea pigs, but eventually shunned the latter on the grounds of intellectual incompatibility. They are monumentally stupid, even for dumb animals, and they make a maddening "weeep-weeep" noise all the time unless they are dead.  Which, as she also she got a few cats here and there, they often were.  "I have had to forgo rodents" she lamented to a friend, after a couple of distressing examples of Nature Being Red In Tooth And Claw. The cats were delighted;they thought she was raising organic food for them.
I inherited a cat when I lived in Hornsey Rise. My next doors there had a pond in their garden. I had French windows opening from my ground floor bedroom into the garden.The pond held frogs.For a while. I would just be settling down with a nice thick book (or a friend who had read one) ,when a Godawful racket would reach my ears from beneath the bed. Then I would have to go and chase frogs round the room. The Cat was given to slaying them, and judging from their expressions they had not expired peacefully.She would then arrange them on my pillow, in order of size. I expect she meant well but I could really have done without them. It's one of those unwanted gifts, an array of dead frogs. "Oh, you shouldn't have..."
I don't mind Nature but I like it kept outside. I don't bother it, and I was hoping that it would reciprocate. But not a bit of it. One of the reasons I moved to London was because I had heard it was paved. And yet, I had to deal with uninvited wildlife all the time. Socking great moths getting themselves into ridiculous  Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em situations in lampshades, Stag beetles in my underwear drawer (perhaps they thought it was a Stag party) in Walthamstow,  Goliath spiders in Chingford, flies in the buttermilk shoo shoo shoo. And in Enfield, I was horribly bitten on the thigh by a Bee, and they are supposed to be a) off making honey and assaulting the flowers, and b) NOT up my skirt in front of students.
I am never quite sure of what eats what, though. I am not keen on flies, but then am abjectly terrified of spiders. But would the spiders hoover up a few moths and save my jumpers, if left to run alive like it says you ought to? Quid Pro Quo. I know they are all God's Creatures, but wouldn't He like a few back?
Meanwhile, we had a builder who was very scared of mice. He had to go into the attic and do wiry things. I had to stand at the bottom of the ladder with a torch, ready to catch him if one made a sudden move.And all mousemoves are sudden, aren't they? The mouse is not a languid creature. As he stood, pale and anxious, on top of the stepladder, I reflected that it was probably not the time to mention that my Mother saves her toast crusts up for them, he would think he was  working with the Addams Family.

Under Pressure

There is a new XBox game out, called COD, I think. It is £40-odd pounds, which I do not have. The GB is in a mood of profound despair.All his friends have managed to acquire said game. They are all in heightened states of bliss, blowing up tanks and swearing at each other with headphones on. My child is a techno-leper, a pariah. He doesn't have his phone either, because he left the charger plugged into the Wirral. I bought him one off Amazon, which arrived very quickly (hurrah!) and exploded equally quickly (boo!). I need the laptop because I am applying for increasingly unsuitable jobs (fish farm manager,anyone?) and writing this.And also discovering that on Facebook, there are other parents who cannot or will not buy this blasted new game, and are consequently being subjected to psychodrama and Extreme Sulks 2. There's another new one on the way in a couple of weeks, too. I shall have to sell an organ, or flog The Dog to a vivisectionist.Maybe I could become a wifelet of the Loins of Longleat? I could drug him and smuggle a few bibelots out, and off I go to "Antiques Roadshow"..
The GB wants to work. For money, obviously. He does not wish to be part of the Big Soc. and smilingly sweep the streets for a bogus Certificate of Citizenship, or some such other nonsense from Mr Macaroon's  Ministry of Silly Ideas.   He would go up a chimney, if paid ready money, without a  qualm, although  it would have to be an  awfully big one. He was rather Right-wing, as a baby. He used to sit in his high chair for long lunches,waving a bottle, going red in the face and yelling about immigration. Or at least that's what he sounded as though he was cross about and he made at least as much sense as that Griffin chap. It is very easy to imagine babies as politicians, and indeed, vice versa. All babies look like Churchill, and all toddlers like Boris Johnson. It is their tragedy.
Anyway, he does not want to go to University.Years ago, this would have horrified me. Now, I think he has a point. I was teaching at a University not so long ago; it was very different indeed from the shambolic seats of learning-by-osmosis attended by myself and my  peers. We were exposed to education, in that we were sometimes in the same room when it was happening. We got to know people who had read more books than we had, and knew more about specific things. This often led to conversations, which were sometimes interesting and often banal. Those conversations were sponsored by alcohol manufacturers.  Some of us got to meet people from completely different backgrounds, and some of us (not me, I'm afraid)  had sex with them. This was all very educational, and beat working. I would like to think that this still happens but I am not at all sure that it does, to any great degree (no pun intended). Maybe it will in the High-End Universities, where you pay the full whack and get the complete experience. In the other ones, the own-brand Victor Value Universities, you will pay less, but get an education-lite. Crammed into vast hangars and bellowed at from huge screens in "contact hours", you will hurtle through your modules as if on a Japanese bullet-train. All the rest of your "Higher Education" will be based on the "FOAFO" model i.e. "Fuck Off And Find Out".
So I think The GB might well do better in The World. Although  at the rate  he's growing they might have to build an extension.  I was away for a few days, and when I came back he was even more G and less of a B. He is sitting on me,at the moment. One great leg is stretched over my lap,effectively cutting off the blood to my feet. Any minute now, a huge arm, seemingly made of stone, will be thrown around my neck, oblivious to the cracking of my poor collarbone. He does exactly the same thing as he did when he was a wee tot, which is to use me as a human sofa. It was cute when he weighted a stone, but now it is life-threatening. I am looking forward to the day when I can curl up in his palm and he can carry me around. It may not be a long wait.

The Auntie Christmas

It's creeping up once more. Christmas. Magazines are trying to worry the women of Britain, and bamboozle them into giving a toss about tablecloths and home-made gifts, again. And you have to start fretting about your pre-Christmas diet so that you can guiltlessly nibble a mince pie on The Great Day. The Marks & Spencers ads feature capering female fools getting all worked up over wrapping paper,in the intervals between running down the street linking arms, tottering in their  painful shoes.
People go mad in the shops, and start wild purchasing of over-priced tut...the whole thing is absurd..Actually, most men don't. I try and have a man's Christmas, as much as it is possible. That means ignoring the silly, fretful aspects and just drinking a bit more. When I worked in shops over the Christmas period, I always enjoyed Christmas Eve, for the last minute post-pub stampede of the panicking male. Nothing says "I love you" like a tiny envelope with the receipt in it. Underwear is a minefield at the best of times,so why not get drunk and then charge into Debenhams at the last minute and buy something scratchy and unsuitable for the woman in your life? It's a high-risk sport, especially when you have no clue about her size. You can always stare hopelessly at the chests of sales girls and mutter "Well I think she's about the same...erm.. height as you?" The gratitude of these punters when you sort them out with something acceptable, do the whole gift-wrap thing, and make sure they keep the all-important bill, is nothing short of profound. I have been given large tips by nice men for providing this essential service. Mind you,I have also been dragooned into shopping with a dear male pal who had got it into his head that his girlfriend wanted toe separators for Christmas. They are no longer together, I mean him and the girl, not her toes. Someone once bought me a posh coffee machine. I think the thinking was "You like coffee;here's a machine that makes it". Unfortunately it wasn't a kind of Mary Poppins arrangement which gurgled you up a cup and then disassembled itself, cleaned itself, and jumped back into its box. I would have liked that. But it was the world's fiddle, with lots of little tubes and valves. Isambard Kingdom Brunel might have been thrilled with it, but I  turned it into two frocks using the magic of Keep The Receipt.
When I was little, we had the truly old-fangled Christmas of the 50's child. Dire threats kept us in bed until 7am, when we were allowed to investigate the contents of our stockings, which contained a ration book and a drawing of an orange.
My Dad,who normally only came in the kitchen to shout at the dog or dismantle a radio, had decided that The Turkey was butch enough for him to engage with. My Mother would eye the sherry bottle and scrabble for her cigarettes when he began the great bad-tempered turkey wrangling process. He also washed up after Christmas Dinner. Another concession to the Feast Of Misrule , as he didn't touch a teatowel from one year's end to the other the rest of the time. Any surviving dishes were put away in a manger. Our kitchen cupboards were ill-fitting, and behaved like doors in a Victorian penny peep-show haunted house. They would fly open unbidden, or suddenly creak and collapse. After a few blows to the bonce, my Dad 's problem-solving skills emerged. He got some foam rubber, and he padded all the edges of the cupboard doors. No, they didn't shut, but it didn't hurt nearly as much when you banged your forehead on them.Christmas Day in our house was sometimes fraught with tension, as two individuals attempted to fulfill traditional gender roles for which they were unsuited by temperament. Mum loathed cooking, and did it with a fag in her hand and murder in her eyes. Dad was a dangerously inventive DIY-er, but persisted because he was too mean to get a man in, and felt it was a sign of masculinity to smash things with hammers. I think they would have been much happier with servants, but alas, none were forthcoming. My Mum's sister had  several "ladies who did". Ironically, Auntie Madge was an adept and accomplished domestic goddess, perfectly capable of turning out three kinds of cake without recourse to the gin bottle and the Fire Brigade.
We always went there on Boxing Day, with great relief.
This year, I am in charge. The GB is only too happy to act as kitchen porter. He likes sharp knives.  I am scouring Marks for an entirely microwaveable Christmas Dinner, and I feel sure that they will not let me down.

Oh Death Where Is Thy..Ouch!

Halloween's a big thing now,isn't it? Partly it's the dressing up,once confined to the under-tens, but now ubiquitous. Then there's the attractive prospect of nine-foot-tall youths being sanctioned to go round demanding sweets with menaces. Here in Liverpool, there is also an event called "Mischief Night". "Mischief" to me suggests harmless, giggly fun; mild naughtiness. In this context it appears to mean throwing half-bricks at taxidrivers. Forty-nine arrests were made on Merseyside, this time. Perhaps it is time for a re-branding? A really lively PR campaign could distinguish "Mischief" ( practical jokes, light-hearted pranks, possibly a tiny bit of mild mooning),from "Violent Unprovoked Assault". Our city would benefit from that  "awareness-raising" exercise much more than it does from having samples of yoghurt drinks thrust at it at Central Station.
I was in town yesterday, and observed that there were crowds of young ladies dressed fancy. Although it is often quite difficult to distinguish fancy dress from mufti; I was standing in Tesco behind a fully-feathered Squaw,complete with tiny chamois dress,and decorative tomahawk. It was 5pm. The rest of her group were decked variously, one in a Barclay's Bank uniform.Now that IS scary. Later, there were more conventional adherents to the form;zombies, werewolves, assorted vampires, witches and ghouls. All romping in and out of Primark,and queuing up for pasties in Gregg's. A huge boon to the fancy dress industry, and the manufacturers of pumpkin-shaped chocolate. Alas, I fear that our lives have become so sadly drab and replete with garden centres and loyalty cards, that any relief is seized upon, Halloween,in my youth, consisted of a plastic washing-up bowl with apples bobbing at your teeth, and a mildly frightening ghost story on the Light Programme. It is All Souls Day today,  when ,according to ancient  ritual and belief, the membrane between the worlds of the living and the dead was at its thinnest. This was the time when one communed with one's dead. And when one's dead might, if things were not quite settled beyond the veil, pop back for a brief but memorable visit. I must say I have longed for this experience to be my privilege, for years and years. Apart from seeing my beloved Grandmother in the kitchen ten days after she had been buried, I have not been successful. I was eight then, and very highly strung, so I am not sure that I can count this. I wish my Dad would materialise, if only to explain the presence of the silver curly wig  that we found in the glove compartment of his car when we were clearing it out.
My Mother has promised me that if there is any way that she can get back, she will.And she is a woman of firm purpose, devoted to keeping her word. I would not care to be the Archangel who got the job of explaining to her that this was not on. She commemorates all the birthdays and deathdays of our family dead, with regular announcements of the "IF your Great-Aunt Molly was alive, she would be 130 today" variety. I am only slightly surprised that she doesn't send them cards. The address, in some cases, might be open to debate.
Not only do I believe in ghosts, I positively welcome applications from them.  I am not frightened of the dead at all, it's the living who bother me. As a morbid child, I always enjoyed a really good graveyard. I sought them out when we were on holiday. Peace, quiet, picturesque surroundings, and something to read. I remember my favourite, which Mum and I discovered in Cornwall. It was an M.R.Jamesian ancient church, built on a cliff overlooking the sea. The cliffs had eroded and crumbled, and the graveyard had delicately subsided, the  fences long tumbled away. Looking down to the sea, you could make out the squared-off edges of coffins poking out of the cliffside. It was a hot still afternoon, and I had attracted a personal cloud of flies. Their monomaniacal buzzing, the crashing of waves, and the odd branch creaking were the only sounds. No birds sang. I was thrilled.
I also had a perfectly lovely time on the Isola di San Michele, Venice's cemetery island. It contains the tombs of Stravinsky, Diaghilev and Ezra Pound. You go in a water taxi, and I entertained thoughts of the last one departing without me, leaving me there for ever. I could have haunted it beautifully, what with the hair and the ghastly pallor, and just think who I would have been seen dead with..