Last night's hallowe'en was monstrous! It was the best hallowe'en ever!
This was thanks to lockdown having put paid to the whole thing. In fact, it was not only quiet, around here it simply didn't exist. Diolch byth. No dauntless infants supported in the shadows by their vigilant parents. No children out alone because they can intimidate while concealed behind face masks. And, later in the evening, no feral youth with their more minacious behaviour, literally screaming through the streets, taking them over, and weaving, bobbing, ducking around and behind parked cars causing who knows what damage.
While even the mayor got in on the act by adjudicated hallowe'en windows, I thought this pumpkin outside the dentist with its teeth and cable clip brace was a jolly good effort deserving applause
No, for once, we had a normal night in, without fear of damage or of intrusion. What a difference that made. The sort of evening that 10 years ago the county council, the police and even Ymlaen Rhuthun Forward were trying to promote, with their messages of social responsibility. A decade later and everyone's now forgotten about these moderating influences, such is the hold of this 'festival' on our lives and the requirements of the businesses behind it.
But, why should we have to suffer this anti-social activity every year?
My late mother would cower at the rear of her house with all the lights off. That, surely, is unsatisfactory. My mother-in-law worries about the night every year and only has treats as a means of placating, appeasing those basically being menacing.
The virus may have prevented door-to-door mayhem but alas! the hallowe'en industry continues to churn out single-use plastics by the hundredweight. This, too, surely cannot be justified in 2020 and with Rhuthun/Ruthin purportedly a (single-use) plastic free town and all that. And, these were deemed as 'essential' goods under the Welsh government's lockdown. Difficult decisions about life and death the Welsh government certainly has to make but (to use a somewhat hallowe'en-appropriate expression) woe betide any politician who gets in the way of October 31st.