Apparently various places around the country have had to put on extra police to cope with the trick or treating tonight.

The latest craze it appears is to go trick or treating in very large groups with a couple of steel bars. So when they say “trick” they actually mean “obscene violence”.

And I wonder why I like to spend the winter months in hibernation. It has nothing to do with the cold. You start with the arrogant little scrotes running from house to house with their hands out for free sweets or they threaten to smash your face in.

Next it’s penny for the guy…

Once upon a time, that would involve actually making a “guy” dressing it in old clothes, and wheeling it around the streets in a wheelbarrow (I may have been a strange child, but I could never figure out how they could be bothered…)

These days, the days of the lazy youth, they don’t bother with the guy, they just trundle themselves around the neighbourhood knocking on doors demanding sums of cash, or they’ll launch a rocket firework at your house/car/pet/child, or put it through your letterbox, depending how brave they’re feeling at the time. (Or more likely how much alcohol has been involved and how many friends are in their group egging them on.)

Bonfire night is 5th November, but these days, that’ll start tomorrow night, as soon as trick or treat season is over, and will continue until the 5th, along with copious amounts of fireworks being sold to the little urchins to be flung at houses, cars and people, accompanied by wild depraved laughing that only the mentally deficient are capable of producing.

Not to mention for the next week, every animal up and down the country will shoot out of it’s skin at regular intervals each and every night as they let off their pilfered fireworks.

Maybe I’m getting old, but I’ve never been able to see the point of fireworks.

As a kid I used to like to go and see the official firework displays in the field behind us, but even then I could never understand why anybody would bother buying them themselves.

A large display is one thing…

A couple of pitiful rockets fired from the back garden seems a pointless waste of money, time and effort.

Not to mention that the second they started to sell them to the public, it was always the mindless deviant offspring that seemed to be able to get their grubby little mitts on them.

Then in another week or so (mid November) everyone will be turning their thoughts to christmas. Time of greed, bankruptcy, suicide and the most irritating and monotonous songs ever to have been recorded in living history.

I swear I don’t know how store workers cope.

Early November the christmas CD goes in the machine and it remains on a constant loop until the end of December.

If I have to go to the shops I’m ready to go on a psychotic killing spree after an hour, so how they cope five and six days a week for 8 hours at a time is beyond me.

Then in the week before December 25th, there’s the start of the sales, followed by the return of unwanted gifts and even more sales the week after, and then yet more sales for the first couple of weeks in January.

Then by mid January half the planet is medicated with anti-depressants as the credit card bills arrive. So it’s the end of January before things settle down to a more normal state.

Anyone care to join me in my festive seasonal hibernation?