Remember Mr Beelzebub's wise words on this:-
"Get them on their home turf and they're some of the friendliest people on earth, especially when you're visiting more remote areas.
Examine them abroad, or look at their influence on the world around them, and you'd be forgiven for regarding them as cultural lepers. I speak, of course, of Americans. Yanks. Septic tanks.
Which is how I came to be hiding behind the baronial front doors of Beelzebub Mansions on Sunday night, in the dark, holding a bucket of water that was soon to be deposited on the unfortunate Officer Dibble, policeman of this parish.
Let me explain. I detest what has become of the ancient pagan festival of All Hallows' Eve. I detest the commercialisation, the exploitation of children and the way that supermarkets have turned it into a bigger money-spinner than Easter.
I detest the Dracula masks, the fake blood and the over-priced pumpkins. And I particularly detest the growing custom of Trick or Treat.
Think about it. We live in a world where we are too frightened to let our children play in the streets or on the park in case Twitching Tommy, the neighbourhood paedophile with the puppy in his trenchcoat pocket, pounces upon them. We scare the living daylights out of them with tales of mass murderers who lurk in the shadows. We warn them ad nauseum not to take sweets from strangers.
And then what do we do? We send them out into the dark October night to knock on the doors of people they don't know to ASK them for fun-size Mars Bars as part of a thinly-disguised extortion racket. Are you quite mad, you parents? Don't you care?
And for this I blame the Yanks. Hallowe'en was exported to the USA by the millions of tinkers who fled Ireland after they forgot where they'd planted all those potatoes. What the Septics did was turn it into a money-making scam and send it back to us in spades. Which brings me back to Sunday evening and that bucket of water.
Expecting the neighbourhood juvenile delinquents to come calling, I had purchased a small packet of Fisherman's Friends and some sell-by-date miniature bottles of cherry brandy with which to ward off their demands with menaces. Unfortunately, my tolerance of Trick-or-Treatery had worn thin by the time the third bunch of little thugs had pulled on the bell rope. Hence the bucket of water.
"They want Trick or Treat?" I thought. " I'll give them Trick or sodding Treat." In the form of a thorough soaking.
The doorbell rang, I pulled it ajar, hurled the contents of the bucket, and so it was that Officer Dibble had his spirits dampened, rather than the baby-faced blackmailers who were the intended target. It was an easy mistake to make. Officer Dibble didn't think so.
After a mild beating in the cells later that night, all became clear. What had brought the long arm of the law to Beelzebub Mansions was another matter. To whit, my man Whittaker's EasyCat scheme, whereby he kidnaps local felines, equips them with a name tag bearing an 0898 number, releases them some miles from home and then waits for old ladies to phone him up to report the errant animals at a very reasonable £3 a minute.
All had been going swimmingly apparently until he took brand extension one step too far and started spraying his strays bright orange, Stelios-style.
This understandably attracted the ire of the mad old woman brigade, the RSPCA, assorted animal rights loonies and Plod was therefore summoned.
As I say, I blame the Yanks."
