Hi anxiety!

Apparently anxiety (in this case in young 'uns) if flavour of the month. Must be the change in the weather.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1653990,00.html

It appears to me that Lucy go off lightly, obviously because she had no elder brothers or sisters or, to give them their full title - socially sanctioned sadists.

For instance, I used to know two sisters who shared a room and, at lights out, one would say to the other (actually the younger to the older, but this is the exception that proves the rule) 'there's a murderer under the bed'. Modern houses, I am sad to report, do not have much in the way of noise insulation and the resulting terrified screams curdled milk for miles around.

I suppose that children have irrational fears because much of the world seems irrational and so their irrational fears are just as real as any rational ones. As you grow up, sprouting hair, flab and acne these fears grow up too, turning from fears to dread and then, worse still, mild concern.

For instance, I work five minutes from the House of Commons or, as it's knows these days, the terrorist target of choice, but am I worried? No, I'm too busy thinking about bacon sandwiches, iPods, foreign travel, and, in the dread category, that nagging pain in my elbow that may be muscular stiffness but could be a hybrid of early onset ebola and a Victorian wasting disease.

Basically, people divide into two different social groups. People who worry (about their loved ones, about the future, about last night, about testicular cancer, about getting fat, about getting old, about the amount of hair in their ears) and psychopaths. That, though, is why we have alcohol. It's nature's prozac.

Another bad habit...

…to add to my growing list of vices.

Dark nights, crap television - the perfect conditions for firing up the iMac and trying to complete 'Aliens vs Predator'.

Last night though, something a little different. It's been a while since I had my arse thoroughly kicked by some thirteen year old from a trailer park in Armpit, Nebraska and so yes, it was time for multiplayer function again.

Luckily there was a game going on, so I joined and…my colonial marine provided a high fibre diet for whoever was playing the alien.

This turned out, apparently, to be a female from Liverpool. At this point I feared I was being 'groomed', made my excuses and left the room.

The problem is that it's so dammed addictive (playing that is, not losing to scouse aliens). It's like getting the game all over again! And going up against real people is a hoot - it's just a pity that AvP is one of the scarier games around and that gameplay usually involves wandering around a disused subway for five minutes before fanged death happens, the gory sound effects of the game drowned out by my girlish screams and then a 'Right!' as I re-spawn and really settle down to do some damage!

Gender specifics

One of the facilitators at the conference was, at first glance, a bloke in a skirt, on second glance a confident transsexual and on closer inspection a tall woman in a short skirt (or maybe just a normal sized skirt on very long legs?) wearing high heels.

I genuinely thought that the only people these days wearing high heels, short skirts and fishnet tights and who were over six foot tall were drag queens. Obviously this was not the case.

Of course, it all boiled down to…shaggable? Answer - oh yes! And even if it did actually turn out to be a re-enactment of 'the crying game' at any point, it would be something to tell the grandchildren.

Magical thinking

Conference this morning, where my presentation might as well have been titled 'our friend cardboard' for all the enthusiasm it generated. Still, I stuck around for a couple of following presentations and it was good to see that nobody missed an opportunity to mock, taunt and generally put the boot in. I didn't stay for lunch.

There were a couple of interesting points. The conference was held in the Strand Palace Hotel, meaning that I had to counter every instinct and walk past Marco's instead of going in and drinking a lot of Peroni. The hotel was your typical grand pile outside and art deco inside.

The most striking thing about them was the gents. I mean, this is how a toilet should be. The urinals were not some piss-poor excuse for a margarine-pot sized bowl full of fag butts stapled to the wall but rather a sheer wall of several tonnes of porcelain propped up against the wall with a trough the size of the Manchester ship canal. As for the stalls - the seats were from a hardwood you can't even buy anymore.

Did have one moment in the loo though, on walking out I stepped on a tile slightly slicker than its neighbours and I was overcome with the sensation that if I did not put my other foot down, something terrible would happen. By this time I had already left and was making my way to the lobby.

Instead of the fantasy receding, as I got further from the gents the sensation got stronger, but so too did the rational thought that this sort of magical thinking is pure crap. It's a form, I guess, of obsessive compulsive disorder and the sort of thing that Channel 4 make documentaries about, showing otherwise ordinary looking people organising fluff by size colour or moistness.

Odd really, and one of those things that make you think 'am I the only person who thinks like this?' Answer is either yes and everyone else really is well-adjusted (apart from their own little mental tics) or no, and everyone else is actually a seething bag of neuroses but better at hiding it.

Then, of course, there are people who are just nutters.

The reality is that the population of the world probably operates on a sliding scale of mental instability, it would certainly explain a hell of a lot.

J'accuzzi

What exactly, one is prompted to wonder, IS the etiquette of the hot-tub exactly?

Drawing clues from the media, one would suspect that it is to frolic naked and drunkenly while surrounded by snow, or use it as some sort of dreadful prop for a swinger's lifestyle - I suspect it's popular on that scene because you can chlorinate the water to minimise risk of infection.

But what about with real people?

Friday morning at the gym means a swim and, instead of running shrieking from the pool into a cold changing room while my swimming trunks grow clammy on my skinny arse - spending five minutes in the hot-tub. This not only relaxes but also, more importantly, gets some warm water on my now battered 'muscles'.

Exercising early has its benefits - one of them being that the hot-tub has not been used at that point and it's a pristine bubbling pool rather than - as it is later in the day - people soup.

So I'm sat there bubbling away when…I'm joined!

Now, if it's a bloke…actually, that's not a problem. Blokes do not join blokes in the hot-tub. Ever!

A young woman slips into the bubbles. What to do? I mean, obviously I shuffle along a bit to make room and, more importantly, make sure that at no time do our bodies ever touch! Thank God for English reserve. We just sit there. Enjoying our bubbles and relaxing. At one point I even stopped holding my stomach in.

It was the ludicrousness of the situation that fascinated me. Here you are, basically sharing a big tub of warm water with somebody, and doing your best to pretend they are not there.

But what kind of conversation could one really make? 'Nice cozzie?', 'I can see that working out has really firmed your bust?', 'Aren't you worried your hair colour is going to run in this hot water?', 'Don't you think you've been sat over that nozzle long enough young lady?'

In the end of course it's a shared facility and I should simply take the stick out of my arse and get used to it. Or, print up a small 'reserved' sign - as a description of my character rather than an attempt to snag the hit-tub for myself.

I suppose there are people - 'normal', I think they're called - who can probably slip into a hit-tub and strike up a conversation? Wonder how many relationships have started that way? 'Mom, how did you and dad meet?', 'Well, I chatted him up in a hot-tub.' 'Gosh mum, you slapper!'

Kiss kiss

Seen on the train window this morning, on the inside of the glass - a kiss mark. The lipstick remains of the lips (I assume a woman's but you never know), the ghost of a kiss in what looked like sunset peach but could, if the colour had faded, been anything from post-box red to harlot violet.

Obviously the normal response to this is to imagine somebody gesturing their goodbuy to a loved one on the platform, make sure you don't rub up against it, and move on. Or, if you're of that bent, I suppose you could smooch it yourself and so get a smacker by proxy. This does mean licking the window, the inside mind, of a railway carriage, never a good idea unless you collect samples for Portland Down. Doubtless if you're the kind of person who habitually licks the windows of public transport, you're probably immune to everything but bird flu and ASBOs. Or maybe it's simply that your loved one used to visit you in prison and you miss the whole 'pressing-the-body-part-against-the-glass' thing.

It's a very female thing to do, kiss a window. If ever you see an arse-print up against a window pane, you'll know that a bloke has just said an emotional farewell to his best mate. Brings a tear to the eye, especially if you're sitting next to the guy at the time.

'The Signalman' on the train.

A pleasant surprise recently when looking for a book, I discovered a collection of Charles Dickens's Ghost Stories - a Christmas present from last year. Decided to read one or two and started with 'The Signalman'. The story is fantastic but there are probably better places to read it than on a train. It's on a par with reading 'Airport' on a translantic flight, but without having a drinks trolley to hand to sooth nerves.

Reading Brett Easton Ellis anywhere

Currently reading the excellent new Brett Ellis book, 'Lunar park'. Now, Patrick Bateman's blog - that WOULD be interesting - 'I'm out of my mind on cocaine, snapple and prescription tranquilisers and I've just come from the Virgin megastore where I've bought Huey Lewis's greatest hits on all five formats and I notice that there's a bloodstain on my Gucci loafers and I can't recall if it's from the nosebleed I had last night after doing too much coke or the gore that spilled from the minor celeb I chainsawed in half at a magic club the other night and got away with it partially because everyone thought it was an act but mostly because everyone really wanted it to happen and I know that I won't be able to get reservations at 'Le Wanquer' tonight but most important of all what is really getting my goat is that they have pulled 'Stargate' from the schedules and this makes me mad, but not as mad as some of the other blogs I have been reading and some of the podcasts I have been listening to because it would appear that even though the book about me published a decade ago caused a storm of process and even though it was totally self regarding and was only ablout me, me, me and that this was seen, at the time, as quite a bad thing because this is how psychotic people actually think…it would appear that there are millions of Patrick Bateman's out there all writing their own novel, paragraph by paragraph in their blogs but instead of stomping people to death in designer tassel loafers, they describe their hobbies, their pets or the painfully empty lives of their f**king kids in such excruciating detail that like the murders in 'American Psycho', you wonder if the level of banality they exist in can actually exist outside their own heads'.

Posh nosh

Off to Claridge's yesterday for a late lunch. This is, I am now convinced, the only way to eat. Eating at 12:00 means that you're rushed out by 2:00 and have nothing to do all afternoon, arriving at 2:30 means one eats all afternoon and then one can comfortably move on to drinking during acceptable social hours.

Claridge's is fantastic. I'm at home just about anywhere other than McDonald's but there is something about having your drink constantly topped up, your napkin refolded and your chair pulled away when you stand up and pushed under your well-fed arse when you return that makes you miss it when it doesn't happen in, day, a Harvester.

The doors to the private dining rooms remained firmly shut and one could imagine that they held either a selection of malcontented Army types planning a coo or some lottery winners that the hotel thought best to hide from view as they were afflicted with being working class.

The food was great. God alone knows how one actually kills guinea fowl - I imagine that if you had a guinea fowl load in the cartridges it would be blown off course by a puff of wind, while loading it with the traditional hunting mix of lead shot, napalm and rusty nails would vaporise the little sod. Maybe the trick is to wing the things, or just scare them to death?

Remarking on the service brought forth tales from travels. My favourite was the story that, in India, the toilet attendant will follow you into the trap and freshen up the seat for you before you do your business. This is either the lap (or is that seat?) of luxury, revolting or simply a response to disease control because the last chap in the trap died of cholera and they now wipe down with dettol between customers. If you enter somewhere tropical and the attendant follows you into the trap with his 'rat hammer', you know you're in trouble.

Beavering away

Like a Wodehousian hero, I have no skills of any use and very little knowledge to impart but do suffer from an exaggerated sense of self importance. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I was asked to help some Beavers.

Beavers are what cubs and hence scouts begin life as, in their larval stage. It's like the Hitler youth, but with badges for managing not to pee yourself rather than bricking the windows of jewellers. My nephew is a Beaver and, when Brown Peewit or whatever asked if any parents/carers/suspicious 'uncles' had a laptop and could come along and help the kids get their I.T. badges, I was volunteered.

This is no doubt because whenever the nephews come around, I retire to the larger study and hunch over the computer in the hope that they will go away. Naturally they associate me with computers as I use my laptop a lot and elbow them off their playstation whenever I visit them.

I used an elderly laptop for the occasion, as having infants paw my powerbook was not my idea of a relaxing time, and parents don't half kick up a fuss when they come to collect their children and find three or four ambulances pulled up by the scout hut.

So last Friday I turned up with laptop and enthusiasm, stone cold sober (mistake) and ready to educate (second mistake).

The three children I had appointed to me knew as much about computers as I did. Interestingly, although they knew what CD ROM, monitor, keyboard and mouse meant, they did not know what 'sit down' meant and came very close to getting a first hand demonstration in what 'greenstick fracture' meant.

I came, I shouted, I educated and I left. I was pleased to note that there was no kind of supervision or background check, so obviously I don't look like a kiddyfiddler. There was a nasty moment when one of the little sods nearly accessed my encrypted selection of eye-watering porn, but with the state the scouting movement are in these days, there's probably a badge for that too.

Jack Frost

It's cold. I mean really cold. There has been frost on the last two mornings and this has had some interesting effects. The first is on the trees. It's been a glorious Autumn. The mildness means that most trees still have their leaves, which have turned gold and red while still on the branches, an impressive display. Come this morning though, there was an interesting sight at the bottom of the road. One tree which, until yesterday still had all its summer foliage, had lost all of its leaves overnight. I mean there was an inch deep carpet of green beneath it in a perfect circle. It's as if the three just went 'fump!' and dropped its leaves the same way a drunk bloke drops his trousers and steps out of them and into bed after a night on the razz.

The other outcome of the cold mornings is that, as I stand in the early-morning cold on the station platform waiting for my train, I'm still sweating from my work out and notice a wisp of steam coming from my head. I'm actually steaming I'm so warm in contrast to the surrounding air. I look like a fag in a barbour jacket. Surely this can't be normal, people steaming? Nobody else seems to steam? Maybe they think I'm some sort of train enthusiast with a weird implant.

Not for the faint hearted

Now, of course, it's not enough to simply go to the gym. Even though, on my last visit, I gave myself a beasting, cranking up the treadmill and running for 15 sweaty, gruelling and nausea inducing minutes. No, now my diet is being targeted.

Breakfast, as we know, should be a leisurely affair. There are those that swear by the continental breakfast - possibly because a roll and a cuppa gives the average foreigner time to see his mistress between leaving his wife and getting to work. Then there are those that have a cup of coffee, fruit juice and a bagel. They are simply c***s.

No, there are only two types of breakfast that are acceptable (three if you count a stomach powder and a retreat to bed after a night on the toot). They are a) the full English/Scottish (the difference being the sausage, which is flat if you are in Scotland, and the cholesterol count, which is the cubed if you are in Scotland and b) breakfast at a country house. This is normally taken at a decent hour, maximising the time that one can spend later in the day during the hours of daylight laying waste to the local fauna with one's side by side. It normally involves bacon, sausage, egg, toast, kedigree, kippers, tea, toast, preserves, butlers, maids, pretending to meet for the first time that morning the person you spent half the night bonking silly and, depending on how lucky or unlucky you are, the discovery of a body in the library, all accompanied by a rather decent half bot of the '76.

Such pleasures are, like a full covering of hair on my crown, lost to me now. I have entered the world of muesli. It may be fit to serve to the winner of the 4:30 at Doncaster but it's no breakfast for a man. I've even tried to jazz it up a little - with dried fruit - a sausage being a little incongruous.

No doubt this is all doing me tremendous good but it is having the most astonishing of side effects. Maybe it's the oats, maybe it's the fruit or maybe it's cutting pork from my diet so drastically but now, when I enstool, any ker-plunk is heralded by an astonishing burst of wind.

It's otherworldly and, the first time it happened, a little distressing. I mean, as a chap with a varied and interesting diet, there has always been an element of chance in a trip to the lavvie but this is unprecedented. Without being too graphic, the sound following the rustle of the opening of the Tattler is like the Flying Scotsman locking breaks at 90mph and colliding with a steam calliope, in a cave.

With an announcement like that, two things are expected - royalty or a steam liner. I won't go into detail but suffice to say, with regular roughage comes regular motion and an end to the days of diet roulette that used to delight, amuse and terrify in equal measure and while often surprising or even worrying, were never dull.

Two minutes

Usually, on Remembrance Sunday I like to be in one of two places, in church being hypocritical or at home. Where I don't like to be is outside, as one is always worried that during the two minute silence some child will kick off and one will be forced - forced mind you - to feed him nettles to shut him up.

So when I found myself in the supermarket at quarter to eleven, I was tense. But I need not have worried. They had seconded the surly youth on customer services onto the tannoy and every five minutes we were reminded, in no uncertain terms, that staff would stop whatever they were doing at eleven o' clock and observe a two minute silence.

And they did. The whole supermarket ground to a half. The only sound was the gentle hiss of the freezers. It was like the opening chapter of the Midwich Cookoos, with trolleys. Quite moving really and genuinely pleasant to see that, instead of my sitting at home and worrying about misbehaviour or lack of respect, actually being out in public - one saw none.

Obviously as I screeched my way out of the car park later I nearly bonneted the local priest as he led the procession from the war memorial back to the church, but the dozy sod should have been looking where he was going.

Yule season sighted in the distance

I have, it would appear, ticked yet another box in the great 'are you a cummogenly old git' Cosmo quiz of life. Standing in Woolies at the weekend (wondering how to get half a pound of pick 'n' mix out of the shop in the hood of my duffel without being caught by the eagle-eyed security guard) I noticed that not only was all the Christmas stuff on sale, but they were playing carols over the store tannoy thingy.

Christmas has started, apparently, and it's only mid November. I mean, Jesus! Surely the run-up to Christmas should start in mid-December. I mean, I don't mind all the gifts being out on display, one can never start laying down the Christmas booze too early, but as for all this tinsel and fake snow - it's not on. It also means that by the time all right-minded men come to do their shopping (December the twentysomethingth) the shop assistants are remarkably short on Yule cheer.

However, redemption was at hand. A quick trip to the big orange fleecer was a real treat - they have their Chriatmas lights selection on display and, my God, we wish you a Chavvy Christmas. The very least of the lights was a santa and a snow man on a motorised see-saw. Chavtastic. I must have one.

Mate!

Lunchtime meeting with lawyers high up in the building. Sat around a table in an airless room talking crap about nonsense to people who appear to be trying to baffle me with their cunning ways. The walls of the building are glass and I can see over the park, the trees in glorious Autumn colours and beyond, the spires of the city. It's the city of Hawksmoore and Wren, but, looking right, it's also the city of Rogers. Then there's the Eye. There's no doubting that it's fabulous but I just wish that they'd stick an enormous playing card in the spokes so that it makes a clakka clakka clakka sound as it goes round.

So there I sit, plotting the chainsaw homicide of nearly everyone else in the room and developing what can only be described as a deep and holy thirst. Mate, I hope that the Stella is cold and the bars are hot, that the jazz is jumping and the city streets are lined with signs saying 'beer this way!'. In short, I am very much looking forward to my visit and, to demonstrate how serious I am, am negotiating with Big Jim for a loan of his sleeping bag. Is this a good idea though? Sleeping in another chaps bag? Perhaps if I get it boil washed first. In dettol.

The perils of kite-boarding

Mart reels in my enthusiasm for taking up the sport of kite-boarding. When he was in hospital (there, you will recall, after going arse over tit down a flight of steps), the bloke in the bed next to him had most of his leg held together with metal pins.

Apparently this bloke had been banging along on his oversized skate-board, no doubt thinking he looked the dog's doo-dahs, when the wind lifts him and, with a flourish, deposits him on top of a concrete sea defense.

This drives the guys shin bone through his knee.

Obviously, this is the sort of thing that is going to require more than a kiss from matron and an application of TCP. Indeed, I nearly do myself an injury simply by hearing it, as I tense up so much my testicles are almost drawn through my body and into my windpipe.

I'm not deterred though. The thing about Brancaster Beach is that there is bugger all on it. There are only three things you're likely to collide with. The sea. Some pines and, of course, other mad-arse kite people.

Context is the key here - listing simply the top ten of things that I am likely to collide with in everyday life we have: 1/ Deadlines 2/Busses 3/ Taxis 4/ Bike messengers 5/ Yeti 6/ The pavement after skidding for fifteen yards on some fresh dog-shit that has gone undetected and the donor of which appears to have been on a diet of oil and ball-bearings 7/ People who insist on holding their cigarettes at head height 8/ People who insist on holding their umbrellas at groin height and 10/ People who insist on holding their groins at groin height.

Okay, so the Yeti thing was an exaggeration, but you see my point.

Bonnie!

There are very few things in life that are better as an adult than they were as children - but fireworks are one of them. When I was a kid, the best you could do was a few underpowered bangers from the local newsagents. These would have to be enhanced by techniques borrowed from Provos or mad uncles. An excellent way of improving the concussive force of a banger was to put it inside a tin can. To make it more spectacular you could cut it in half and pour all of the gunpowder onto a saucer. This led to learning not to use Mum's best china for this sort of thing and realising what the blue touch paper was for.

Bonfire night on the Fens though was excellent. The only way the fireworks could have been enhanced was stacking them in the middle of a truck full of fertiliser.

After a bonnie disappointment a few years ago, Fred had been storing his wood indoors in preparation for the big night. We open the door of the shed and I'm confronted by what appears to be the mythical pallet graveyard. The reason for those signs 'pallets wanted' is because people like Fred grab all available ones and chop them up for kindling. We throw together the basic structure of the bonnie and as I handle some of the older wood, tinder dry and crumbling under my fingers, I get an inkling that this lot is going to go up like, as we say in that part of the world, Christ on a bike.

The inner core is cardboard, soaked in turps, surrounded by a framework of wood and encased in tree branches and off cuts. Some of these I recognise from the 'bonnie-that-would-not-burn' of a few years ago. Obviously revenge, as well a tang of turps, is in the air.

The thing is about ten feet high by the time we finish and is topped off with two guys - we christen them Tony and George.

As darkness falls, Big Jim vanishes into the night. We then realise that the fireworks have also gone. Once we get outside we realise what has happened. The approach of previous years has been abandoned and Big Jim has been busy setting up rockets and jamming roman candles into handy mole hills in a display set to rival that of Dresden.

In previous years, you see, the box was held at one end of the garden and a firework was selected then run down to the other end of the garden, embedded and fired off. This meant two things - the person running away from the firework invariably looked like a great big girl running like a girl in a dress - and as it took a while and alcohol was being consumed, there were health and safety concerns about an inebriated pyrotechician leaning over a rocket trying to light it while it was already alight.

So…the bonnie is lit. We ooh, we ahh, we step back. The wind catches it. We give girlish screams and stand further back. I fear for my anorak. Fred fears for his shed and the treeline. The thing is going up at speed and the garden looks like a scene from the last reel of 'The Wicker Man'.

The bonnie takes about five minutes to turn half a ton of wood into a glowing pile of embers. His taper having gone out, Big Jim rescues four foot of glowing branch from the fire and, swinging it round his head to keep it glowing a dull red in a way that makes him look like some crazed, anoraked lord of the Sith, starts letting off fireworks.

Impressive. The roman candles shoot flame and the rockets are so good that I think we might bag a low flying F14 on the way back to Mildenhall. Top moment comes when a rocket sheds its tail and makes its way across the garden at about six feet off the ground. It's so terrifying that I nearly drop my beer.

Once we stop, the neighbours start. It's like a CNN report from Gulf war III, only louder and not all green and fuzzy. Unless, of course, you view it through the bottom of a bottle of Beck's.

Burning religious issues

Every day this week the only difference in the weather has been which direction the wind has been blowing the rain. Today, the day before bonfire night, we have blue skies and sunshine. As has been pointed out to me - 'it's a sure sign that God is a protestant'.

Men & Sarnies

The opening of a new M&S just yards from the office has, no doubt, put a right old crimp in the profits of the various other sandwich bars dotted around Victoria. Not least because it is, quite liderally, on our doorstep and hungry office drones no longer have to waddle their enormous triple decker BLT craving arses half way down the street to get their lunch. No, they can just roll over the food hall and load up a carrier bag with lard on white bread.

M&S is also, cleverly, underpricing the competition. This is of course being ruthlessly exploited by people like me who have no loyalty at all to any brand.

For instance, Benjies is handy but once sold me milk that was off - something I've been in a snit about ever since. Pret has the prettiest and friendliest sandwich sellers - a sure sign that they are illegal immigrants - surely there has to be a direct correlation between how friendly the staff are and how vulnerable to deportation they are, especially this close to the Home Office. If you're surly, you go home early. Of course, if you are able to suck your case officer off, at the hinge, it's visa time.

The other benefit is that there are suits and shirts available in an emergency. The nose bleeds, spillages and general melee of office life mean it's always good to know that a spare shirt is only over the road should something really spectacular happen to the one you're wearing, like it going out of fashion by the afternoon. Also, now I'm getting on, it's good to know that if, as might happen, I foul myself in spectacular fashion, I will be able to purchase new emergency trousers.

Boo!

Disappointingly few trick or treaters on Monday night. Of course, having a welcome mat perennially doused in animal excrement might have put off some of the keener nosed types, but I was hoping for more than just half a dozen.

Last year was a really good showing. When news got round that somebody not on the sexual offences register was giving chocolate away to kids, the feral children of the village did their best with whatever make up was on mum's dressing table, used a bin-liner as a cape and turned up on the doorstep. My favourite costume was the child who had cunningly contrived to look like a looming teenage oaf out to break his ASBO.

Hallow'een must be great for single blokes though, as basically all the children are herded round by their mothers and as a rule of thumb, the better the costume the better the chance that mum is single and is determined to show that Hallow'een can still be fun even if 'your bastard father has moved in with that slut from the typing pool'. She might as well have an illuminated arrow over her head saying 'low self esteem - possibility of having dinner cooked for you AND sex!'

That's why you should always hand the kids your basic blue and white striped value chocolate, and ply the mothers with Green and Blacks that have been soaking in rohypnol for at least a fortnight.

With few trick or treaters, (two of which, and I swear this is true, nearly started crying when I asked if they wanted a nice apple instead of chocolate), I'm left withhalf a tin of Roses. Acne here I come. Mind you, I'm really glad I didn't get round to completing my original intention, which was to inject all the soft centres to the brim with amphetamine - things that go bump in the night? Yea, that'll be your kid doing a wall of death at three in the morning, out of his mind on chocolate and speed. Teach you to let him come round my place and try and take my chocolate.