An Abundance

We had three lanterns this year, decorating the wall along the drive. The little one is a rather shrivelled turnip; the middle-sized one that looks a bit like a psychopathic Minion was one I found wedged into the mouth of a litterbin in the village a couple of days ago, untouched and undamaged, so I took it away. The large one I left to Ms Formerly Aldgate to carve and thought at first it looked relatively benign, before realising it had a menacingly sardonic quality about it. Together they made an appealing little group. We had a lot of trick-or-treaters, children who I didn't recognise with their parents loitering in the background. The last batch included a ten-or-so-year-old dressed as a sort of zombie nurse with a zip fastener mounted on her forehead. OK.

Our customary visit to the churchyard to toast the dead was curtailed a little by the presence of a group of teenagers round the corner, who may have been the ones responsible for the trail of pumpkin destruction evident around the centre of the village next morning. That's the second year it's happened, which thereby automatically makes late-night pumpkin-smashing an Ancient Tradition that must be taken account of next time. Ours survived.