Thursday, October 26, 2006

Last night, Pudsey took me to our local so that she could see her amour and have some scampi-fries. I decided to imbibe a glass of wine while she conducted her business and said hello to her friends, and I settled down with a crossword.
Suddenly, the peace was shattered by the door bursting open, and four small brats children bursting in wearing an array of skeleton masks and fairy wings, and brandishing buckets, shouting 'Trick or treat!"
I glanced at the paper to check the date and make sure I hadn't missed a week, but no, it was definitely the 25th; certainly not Halloween yet.
They ran around the pub waving their buckets at the customers, who started to look around to see if there was an adult with them that they could pin to the ground and kick the crap out of complain to, but no, the children were on their own. In a pub. With no adult. At nearly 8pm.
Just before the landlady spotted them, one of the girls came up to me and asked once more 'Trick or treat?'
"Merry Christmas!" I said to her.
She looked at me blankly for a second before replying, "It's not Christmas..."
"It's not Halloween yet either, you stupid girl" I told her before the boss chased them off the premises.
I was gobsmacked; not only because of the stupidity and audacity of the children, but at the though of what sort of parents let their spawn run around on their own, in what could be a very dangerous place.
There should be laws against that sort of thing. Either that, or a chance to educate the parents and their offspring my way*

*Let's just say it would be a form of Aversion Therapy.