The clocks go back soon. I keep waking up to darkness, soon I shall be leaving work to the same. Once again we, as a nation, plunge into the darkness. It’d be depressing if we didn’t have warm coats, scarves and real fires. We must be cheerful, above all, when the nights are cold and dark. And so we bring on Hallowe’en and Bonfire night and Christmas and all the jolly festivals which really make us feel good about standng around in dimly-lit areas watching our breath condense out of our bodies.
I am in a corner re Hallowe’en. I can’t not do a window display involving pumpkins this year, no matter how much I won’t want to bother come Friday afternoon on the 31st. I’ll want to sit down on the sofa and play videogames, not carve squash into amusing shapes and hand out individually-wrapped sweets hastily bought from Woolworth’s. But I will do it, because it’s fun, the sort of fun we as adults can have on nights which are no longer intended to amuse us as once they were.
Reclaim the night, indeed.