Halloween is just around the corner and I can’t wait. It's one of my favourite days in the year and I love how everyone in the city young and old embraces it.
The 31st of October was always a big occasion in our house and since we were no age our costumes have looked the part. My earliest recollection is my brother and I being Oliver Twist and his wee sister with soot covered faces and ragged clothes.
This supporting actress role did not go down well with the three year old me so the following year I was a vision in a rainbow of colours, dressed up as one of those Caribbean women with grass skirt and plastic fruit piled high on my head. Which, incidentally, my younger brother might have tried to eat because I might have told him it was real.
One year the parents decided that my two brothers and I (the young ‘in hadn’t appeared yet) would all dress up as the same thing. We agreed and giggled excitedly in the back of the car on the way home from school thinking about what theme the 'rents had come up with.
Superheroes we concluded. I was surely going to be ‘Shera Princess of Power’ while my brothers were definitely going to be either ‘The Turtles’ or ‘Batman and Robin’. We were in fact two priests and a nun!
As it was my first communion year I was very holy and took to my role as ‘Sister Anna Marie’ with gusto. I donned my rosary beads and spent the entire night with my hands joined looking pius while trick or treating and blessing mammy’s for the bountiful rice crispy buns and monkey nuts that they packed into our pumpkin shaped baskets.
Our house was not alone in going all out for Halloween, all my friends were the same, and everybody’s costumes were always home made and brilliant. Someone was a ‘Ghostbuster’ with their dad's overalls and half a vacuum cleaner inside a school bag.
Two kids I know were dressed up as ‘Sam and Ella, two bad eggs’. There were pirates with tinfoil and cardboard swords, skeletons made out of a black jumper and some masking tape and Greek god costumes from a spare sheet pilfered from the hot press.
Now it’s become a multi million pound industry with more and more costumes shops popping up every year. The costumes are expensive but fantastic and everyone young and old takes part.
But the best costumes have to be men dressed up as women. I’m not talking drag queens with impeccable make up and legs to die for. I’m talking your average hairy legged, beer bellied bloke in a miniskirt, halter neck and pink stilettos.
Some may think the essence of Halloween has been lost over the years with it now being a fashion parade rather than a bewitching eve of all souls.
But the sight of of a middle aged man staggering up the road at three in the morning with one shoe, wig back to front and handbag round his neck...now that’s scary!
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