My how times have changed. I hate the phrase ‘Trick or Treating’ but yesterday I used it. I just couldn’t think of what we used to call it and said to a kid ‘So are you going out…Trick or Treating?’. I have always tried to resist the gradual invasion of American lingo such as ‘ass’ instead of ‘arse’ and ‘pavement/sidewalk’ instead of ‘path’ but I now admit defeat.
What did we use to call it? I think it was ‘Halloweening’. It wasn’t just ‘Are you going out dressed as C3PO with a Dunnes Stores plastic bag?’. We used to say 'Help the Halloween Party'
when they opened the door and then scraped slices of apples off a plate into our bags. Driving through Tallaght last night I got a good glimpse of the modern kid’s impressive level of costume, I was thinking how these days nobody would have to resort to the age old poverty stricken costume of an Arab with a bed sheet and tea towel on the head when I saw a few kids with bin liners taped to them.
That was always a step below the Arab. Pulling a bin bag over the head and some crap face make up has been the standard issue Halloween costume of poor kids forever. 'I'm a witch' they'd say but their costume would say 'My parents are alcoholics and pissed away the Childens Allowance'
Were Bonfires always that terrifying? Or was I just kept away from good ones? Driving home we saw some huge ones, through Aylesbury, Killinarden and Jobstown it was clear that the poorer the area, the bigger the bonfire. When I was living in Aylesbury I went over with my mate’s kid to the Church sponsored bonfire and it was the gayest thing ever. It was around 4 feet high, behind a cordon and worst of all a nun stood on front of the cordon. Even the smaller kids were confused as they could clearly see the massive dangerous fires blazing in the distance in Killinarden.
Another move away from the old style shitty Irish Halloween is the games. I’ve heard from 2 parents that instead of bobbing for apples/money and swinging an apple on a piece of twine for kids to bite at, they now have a Halloween Pinata that showers the kids in mini Mars bars. That head in a basin full of water game always started off well until it was full of snot by the time the third kid was up.
2 kids called in last night so it’s Chickatees and Meanies for dinner till Sunday. Wahey!
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12 Comments:
Nobody called into my place trick or treating which was a first. Saying that though we had no decorations outside. What the fuck was up been giving apples cut in half? It was terrible, all the monkey nut shells and crushed fruit in a white plastic bag.Ick
Bob,
We were just discussing much the same thing over on me own blog.
http://www.fustar.org/2006/10/31/190/
As a poster there reminded me, the usual lingo when we were smallies was "Aneeting for Halloweeeen?" and not "Trick or (like) Treat".
The one Americanism that galls me above all others, though, is the use of "Mom". As in, "My Mom will pick us up from School". What the fuck??
Bunch of Momfuckers...
Bob sez: yeah with you on that Fustar. I hear it every day and not just from young impressionable girls but from fully grown adults. 'How's your Mom?' also kids don't say 'bickies' anymore it's all 'cookies'.
Stewbie it seems the new rule is if you don't have specific decorations outside you get blanked by the kids. And I think there's a trend to have Halloween parties instead of marauding around.
Forgot to mention this: I lived in a place before and on Halloween night my housemate answered the door, told the kid we have nothing and then the kid said he had gotten loads of sweets and offered him some, the greedy bastard takes a handful of sweets off the kid and slams the door! What a wanker.
Yeah, that's pretty wanky alright. Bet you still took some of the sweets off your housemate though, didnt you? Admit it! ;)
Snot, snot snot don't becry snot with your, "That head in a basin full of water game always started off well until it was full of snot by the time the third kid was up".
Apples don't taste the same without snot. LOL
Bob sez: Yeah I had a lollypop from the nabbed sweets. Want to know the culprit's name? Fat Darren.
Hey my snots taste great it's OTHER PEOPLE'S snot that I don't like.
surely a pinata is mexicanisation? enough smartarsery, my vivid memory of halloween is a handful of homemade popcorn. how crappy is that? these people expected kids to eat that. growing up my calling phrase was "any apples, nuts or cigarette butts?" this was phased out due to the fact that we didn't want apples or nuts, we wanted refreshers, whams, woppas, fruit salads, blackjacks, desperate dans, busters and so on. also you'd get the off comedian who would attempt to give you the contents of his ashtray. anyways the whole tradition seems to be dying out, fewer and fewer kids are calling around, in this time of evil weirdos everywhere I think they only go to people's houses they know well. shame. heres an afterthought, I lived in Wolverhampton the Halloween before last and the amount of people who put up signs, saying "no trick or treaters" was ridiculous, some of them even had the cheek to decorate their anti Halloween signs with pictures of bats and witches and stuff.
Bob sez: That's gold!! No trick or treaters signs with festive decoration. It's beautiful. I think parents are iffy about letting their kids call into strangers because of the amount of Polish in the country. Joke.
"any apples, nuts or cigarette butts?" has soul
Agree totally about the bonfire thing. There was a time when only some of the bonfires were skanger fests. Now it seems they all are.
There's an aggression in teenagers today which has more of an edge to it. AND (yeah I sound like an old man) teenagers seem to be kind of... very uneducated these days. I've never seen so many dumb fucks on the streets of Dublin. It's like all books have been replaced by MTV.
Society is defo dumbing down and aggroing up!
Do people still cook marshmallows on bonfires??
Bob sez: Hey Sleazy, yes kids are thicker these days. But imagine been a kid these days, so many wonderful distractions. Conversley, I used to read a book a week commuting on the bus but now that I have an ipod I watch youtube clips and films. Have read 2 books this year.And one of them
was mine. So me so thick too d000d
Bonfires are bigger in poorer estates because the kids in posh ares cant hoard wood - the council came around my posh estate (where i rent being more like a fugee than a poshee) and took any pile of wood that looked remotely like a bonfire. My poor sprogs had to watch as a gang of potbellied shovel sleepers took everything they'd collected into a pickup and drove off. My kids did the whole collecting thing and no matter what i do it just never feels the same now becasue its different so fucking different without the gilt edged newness of childhood - we're old people now sad old porn fatigued wageslaves who know theres nothing at the end of the rainbow.
I remember some huge bonfires round belfast way when I was there, but I don't think they were really for hallowe'en though,
Speaking of bin bags that's what I made my costume out of....this year. My mad finnish mate Pietari had a fancy dress party and the Fins can pretty much match the Irish for da booze,
I found a cardboard box that fitted over my head cut scary batman eyeholes and a grumpy batman mouth attatched it to a big cardboard shoulder brace shape thing and covered the lot in heavy duty bin bags and black insulating tape, I had to keep going back to the hardware shop for more tape and bin bags in the matter of a serial killer, I should have said something like, 'can I get some more tape, it's still twitchin' but thought better of it.
I can see why batsy doesn't get the ride much, you can't see or hear anything in such a suit I looked like a cross between batman, a gimp and a gimp robot. pics as soon as I nab some from fellow guests!
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