It's a long time since the boys used to go out guising at Halloween to visit the neighbours and perform a song, poem or joke for their satsuma and monkey nuts. When they were small I used to go with them and in later years I was glad to delegate this task to Jamie! They dressed up in various costumes over the years, for example spacemen, vampires (wearing a magnificent cloak made by my Mum) or monsters. One of my favourites was a very cool pumpkin costume worn by David with a pair of green tights on his skinny wee legs.
This year we decided that a good way to celebrate Halloween would be to watch a scary film with the lights out. I have watched remarkably few scary films in my time, but I remember when they really were scary - I watched Friday the 13th on television with Jenn about 30 years ago and nearly fell off the couch at the unexpected ending! I also remember watching an obscure film which involved a sinister face appearing in a driver's mirror as he drove along a dark road at night. To this day I always check the back seat of the car carefully before setting off if I am driving at night!
Anyway, Cat was round, and after perusing the films on offer we decided on a film called "The Cabin in the Woods", released earlier this year, which Ally and Cat had heard was quite good. It's certainly quite a modern twist on the genre and they have put in a bit of humour - it's a bit of a parody of horror films. However when it came to being scary it left me completely unmoved; not even a frisson of terror passed through me. I reflected that it's a long, long time since anything on film has had the power to scare me. I think that this is because as I get older I find real life, both personally and in the wider world, to be at times so scary and horrifying that a scary film is nothing but a poor imitation.
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