Guisers

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading FB and Blips of Halloween from across the globe.  At the moment I seem to have family and friends in very exotic (and some hot!) places.

Things have changed since my days of 'Guising'.  

For a start our costumes were all home made (bin bags, stuffed tights, pillow cases etc), we dressed as something or someone, not just in scary costumes,  we knocked on EVERY door without any adult supervision and without fear of meeting someone behind the door who would harm us.  We didn't have pumpkins, we carved turnip lanterns (and bent/broke many spoons and forks! Those mothers were HARD to carve!), we used candles to light them (oh that smell of half cooked turnip lantern !).

We were given apples and monkey nuts (obviously nut allergies were not invented ), sweets if we were REALLY lucky - and we had to perform.

If Halloween was a Sunday, would would go Guising on a Saturday night (one year we cheekily went out Saturday AND Sunday!!!!).

We came home and dooked for apples, or held a fork in our teeth while kneeling on a chair and tried to 'spear' a bobbing apple from a height..  There was a bar of soap in the water and If you speared the soap instead of the apple, you had to take a bite !

Tonight it was lovely to see so many children out Guising, and to see the decorated houses and the carved pumpkins at the doors.  We've gone a bit American, but the highlight of the night for me was hearing this little 'Ninja' in the blip recite Burns poetry for her party piece !