The scariest thing on Halloween was my fluffy pink bathrobe

I was marginally disappointed as I had made a last-minute trip to the shop especially to buy a bag of Halloween Haribo, and earlier in the day I had whittled an eerie pumpkin head, which I had placed on my garden gate to tempt the ghouls.

The Teen and my best friend were not surprised that we had no callers – both convinced that my frightening evening appearance, consisting of pink fluffy dressing gown, hair rollers, hairy legs and cigarette, were putting people off.

Oh how very witty indeed.

I was out just the night before as it happened and was asked for ID before the Waitrose man would serve me.

Not so ghoulish after all, am I?

The thing is I am a bit of a contradiction: I like the innocence of bobbing for apples on All Hallows’ Eve but I don’t care for America’s custom of legalised mugging, which we seem to have adopted.

Groups of chubby children squeeze into elaborate, tacky costumes before stuffing sweets from strangers into their chocolate-smeared faces.

On Thursday I even witnessed a group of middle-aged zombies clutching orange oversized buckets to carry sweeties for their own consumption. That’s just wrong.

A good friend of mine, who generally is not the prankster kind, thought it would be hilarious if he scared the living daylights out of his young family one Halloween.

He donned a mask, lurked around the back garden and peered through the doors, watching his wife and children completely freak out, terrified at the sight of this stranger they thought was about to burgle them, or worse.

He spent the next five hours trying to calm them down.

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