All - Hallows - Bugger off.

It’s that time of year again.

No I’m not talking Christmas – though in adland that seems to be all we’re thinking about right now.

I’m thinking in rest-of-the-world terms – it’s Halloween.

A time of year where the simple pasty can be transformed into a prickly, petrifiying pastry.  Where a biscuit is a ghastly groaning ghoulish ghost, and everything else is the kind of colour that you’re convinced it can only give you stomach ulcers, and will probably taste of them too.

Another American tradition hauled over the pond for marketing directors to get on board with, to overhaul their brands with, to spin their otherwise respectable products into tacky, gimmicky, tasteless rubbish.   

I’ve forever had an issue with this time of year – the falsity of it, the way that grown men and women paint their faces and use this as a mask to hide behind whilst they drink and cause the kind of havoc that only their alter-ego can provide.

The way that children are dressed up and sent to beg round stranger’s houses, whilst their parents begrudgingly trudge behind them, making sure this genuinely dangerous activity doesn’t get out of hand.

The idea of carving a pumpkin makes me want to carve my bloody wrists.

If you were to wear a mask at any other point in the year of this standard, you would be assumed a burglar, a bank robber – no matter what, somebody up to no good.

So this year, as my annual rant comes to a close, I declare, that this Halloween, I will not be seen.  I will not answer my door to the call of the begging children.  I will be locked inside, safely, watching horror films.

Actually maybe I will answer the door… 

I’ve ordered takeaway.