No.8 - Special Days of the Year - Halloween

Now I can’t remember whether we did anything in class for Halloween – anyone remember? Of course it was a bit different in those days and not the big thing it is today. We did celebrate it at home however, with other kids on Valley Road. Pumpkins hadn’t been invented then unless you went to see Cinderella at the pantomime and then you weren’t sure they were real anyway. Instead we carved out turnips and put a lighted candle inside. No ‘Trick or Treat’ in those days – I think that came over from the States some time later. But we did have ‘Mischievous Night’, the night before Bonfire Night when we lifted gates off their hinges or pinched someone else’s bonfire wood which they had collected for the next night.