Giggedy Giggedy BOO!

As you may or may not know, I couldn’t get out of Canada fast enough when the time finally came to leave. I have, as you most definitely know never looked back and in fact cannot imagine a time in the near future when I will find enough resolve to return even for a visit. I think it’s called post traumatic shock. Not all was wasted; I brought a couple of good things back – a certification in Yoga and a healthy disregard for all things cold. Halloween however is another exception. North Americans know Halloween and unbeknownst to me, the costume tsunami that it is, you can’t help but be affected by it. This year, my first Halloween back in London, I found myself missing the effort Canucks go to.

Londoners are too stressed, too frightened and too multi-cultural for a secularised scream fest like Halloween to flourish. If you’re lucky you can go spend stupid money at a club and if you are really lucky some generous and warm heart soul will have a little party in their kitchen.

Nor will you easily find any kitschy decoration adorning house fronts here. Not so much as a pumpkin on the door step, nothing. I tell a lie, The Lish and I saw a couple of pumpkins that looked like they’d been carved by the criminally insane precariously perched on impossibly narrow window ledges. The brave who go Trick or Treating usually find people, if they do deign to open the door to you will promptly slam it in your face annoyed at having forgotten what date it is.  Welcome to London.

I am one of those lucky people who knew a generous and kind-hearted soul having a party. I’ve learned never to shun the hand of friendship and of course, we all three of us went the extra mile for it – taking, if you will, a very Canadian approach to the whole thing; planning costumes and holding dress rehearsals.

At the party I noticed another cultural difference. Halloween in the UK is about the fear factor (however you want to slice it. Some make it funny, others need to be institutionalised) but to a Canuck, anything goes. So while my British friends came as witches and vampires, The Silverback went as Stewey (Family Guy) , The Lish went as a traditonal bride (and so it begins), while I went as Amy Winehouse. So I guess, there is one other Canadian thing I’ve retained. Everyone was baffled by our eclectic choices. It comes down to this I guess, the British like to play by the rules (for the most part) so who’s boring now?

Another thing about the Brits is that they are far more comfortable celebrating historical events. See, for us here more important than Halloween is Bonfire Night (5th November) which celebrates the foiling of Guy Fawkes's attempt to blow up the houses of Parliament – London’s first religious terrorist I suppose. And on the 5th of November, would you like to know what this nation of civilised bowler hat wearing, anti-extremist does? It burns an effigy of Guy after letting off hundreds of coloured explosives.

I rest my case.