Halloween

Tonight, as the incessant ringing of my doorbell will testify, is Halloween. I hate Halloween. I am unable to sit down, relax and enjoy the comfort of my home for the endless stream of waifs and strays under the misguided impression that it is acceptable to come begging at my door. It is wholly unacceptable for anyone to go begging at anyone else's door here in the UK - indeed it is illegal to do so.

I'm probably sounding like a right old fuddy-duddy but I really believe the significance of Halloween - the evening before All Saint's Day, when Christians remember loved ones who have emigrated to the Kingdom of Heaven - is completely lost on the gangs of teenagers who roam the cold, moonlit streets. They see it as no more than a money spinner - an opportunity to go and capitalise from people they neither know nor care about. A 99 pence mask and the words "trick or treat" or "penny for Halloween" and these urchins seem to think they're entitled to leave pensioners cowering in their own homes, babies unable to get to sleep and a wake of destruction behind them.

Yet more Christian values that have been trodden into the ground by the onset of commercialism.

Anyway, on a lighter note David Platt is (hopefully) going to top himself on Coronation Street!