When I was little, my parents had friends who worked at Mildenhall air base, and each year we would go trick or treating with them there. In my opinion, no one does Halloween as well as Americans, and it was always an exciting event.
I remember one year, knocking on a door and saying “Trick or treat”, only to be met with a very scary sight of a man in full monster costume, who roared at us as soon as he opened the door. Little wuss that I was, I screamed my head off and ran away. Any chance of sweets was completely forgotten, my sole focus was just to survive!
It has always baffled me a little, that we spend all year round warning children of the dangers of strangers, and when I was a kid there was a huge “Stranger danger” campaign focused around not accepting sweets from strangers. Then once a year it’s encouraged to go and ask for sweets from…strangers! My parents were never comfortable with it, and I completely understand why. Mildenhall base felt ‘safe’ as they knew a lot of the people there, but once we moved away it didn’t seem like a good idea anymore. Besides, the area that we moved to didn’t seem to celebrate it, and then as an adult I moved to another area where we had no trick or treaters at all.
Then about 7 or 8 years ago I got the urge to try carving a pumpkin for the first time ever. I really enjoyed it, and did them the following couple of years too, but with no one celebrating Halloween nearby, it was a bit of an anti climax come Halloween!
Last year we moved home again and discovered that our village very much celebrates Halloween! So I plan to embrace the pumpkins again!
Here’s some that I have carved over the years. The carousel is definitely the most detailed one that I've made so far, but the pug is my favourite...
