Janet Christie's Mum's the Word - Youngest gets her glow on for Halloween

Carving out a smashing pumpkin display

Janet Christie's Mum's the Word. Pic: J Christie

Despite my best efforts to dodge Halloween, Youngest loves a bit of tatt and will be carving pumpkins as usual.

“Do you want to come to the pumpkin patch with me and my friends?,” she says, as she assembles her pumpkin picking outfit and rifles my best jumpers for a muddy field trip.

“These are nice, but to be honest they’d look better cropped,” she muses as she tries them on.

J Christie

“Don’t even think about it. I’d love to come, thank you, but I can’t,” I say.

I’m sure it’ll be an Insta opportunity, all pumpkins, puppies and toddlers, and other “just adorable” (according to Youngest) elements, but I’m working.

“But it’s Halloween, don’t you want to come and choose a pumpkin? What about our decorations?” To which my answer is a silent ‘not bothered’. I’ve bought a turnip which is the proper vegetable to celebrate All Hallows Eve and makes a much more effective shriveled head but I’ll probably just chuck it in the soup, and I’ll need all my decorations mojo for Christmas.

“I already have decorations,” I say and point at the cats, one black one ginger. “Witch’s cat, and orange and round.”

“I suppose we could get them little hats online,” she says at which Big Ginge vanishes and the young ‘un skips about like the gullible fool that she is. “I’ll look when I come back ‘cos I’ll be online selling my old Halloween party outfits to pay for my new one,” then she leaves, the cats collapse comatose and it’s a Halloween-free zone for a few hours.

“Look!” She’s back. “It was so fun, lots of toddlers staggering around falling over pumpkins while their parents did photo shoots, just adorable, and loads of pumpkins to choose from. I’ve got a big orange one, a wee orange one and a white ‘ghost’ one. Now you go and find the tea lights and I’ll start carving.”

“I don’t think we’ve got tea lights,” I say, stumbling over the words ‘tea’ and ‘lights’, which are triggering because of the bad associations like searching the shed and trips to IKEA.

“Everyone has tea lights. Even us.”

She right. We have a tea light, and she improvises with the fairy lights that have been on the mantelpiece since Christmas and in a flash she’s got a Halloween display glowing in the hearth. Sometimes it’s scary how magic she is.

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