Society
Now what? - Lauren Booth realises she’s getting older
Published 11 November 2002
Guy Fawkes and Halloween showed how I have become a hypocrite
Fireworks night, like Christmas, comes earlier every year. We've had a pretty impressive rocket and banger display along our street every night since mid-September. Mostly, the fireworks have been hurled from hand to foot among local kids, although the old putting-bangers-in-a-milk-bottle trick for that extra explosion is still popular.
We lie in bed, my husband and I, and talk about the kids out there. He, the ex-skinhead, and me, the one-time binge-drinking gadabout, keep grumbling about kids "not being at home at this time of night". Or we tut sadly about the elderly "living in fear".
From time to time, though, we forget our new roles as grown-ups and community-conscious parents and revert back to our former "trash it or smoke it" selves.
Take the scooter comment the other night.
"That is a really bad place to park," sighed my husband, looking at a motorised hairdryer with longing.
"Why?" I asked. "Because it could be knocked over easily?"
"Nah. Because to steal it, all you need to do is . . ." he described how to break the steering lock and get a scooter running in second gear. "It takes about 30 seconds if you know what you're doing. Then you're off. If there's enough petrol in the tank, you can drive it down to Brighton and dump it after a good night out."
On another evening, as we passed a teenager sitting on a wall drinking an alcopop, I called out: "You really shouldn't be drinking that rubbish you know."
My husband gave me the "you are such a hypocrite" look he has been working on for some time.
The bloke glanced at his bottle and back at me. "Oh, yeah? Why not?"
"Because for a couple of quid more you could buy a straw and a quarter bottle of Smirnoff - now that gets you pissed." The kid's face was classic - it was as if his grandparents had offered him tips on cunnilingus. My husband gave me a high five and we heh-hehed like a couple of children's presenters all the way home.
Halloween proved a test for our shifting moral code. Drifting through our windows, along with the bangs and whistles of fireworks, came screams of abuse.
"F**k you, then, you mean c**t!"
"Over here, I've got one . . . Oi, don't close the door you bastard!" The local little angels were trick or treating, bless 'em. Eight or so genuinely mean-faced witches in black leggings and T-shirts skipped from door to door with their Dracula boyfriends. They were aged between seven and 12 and were committing what President Bush would no doubt brand as such "extreme acts of terror" that I found myself looking to the skies for the inevitable US air strike that would flatten our borough.
Our little girl looked adorable in her white sleep suit, little bowler hat and face paint. By now, our neighbours had double-locked their doors and had no intention of opening them again until daylight. But, three doors down, a surprise! A pair of twentysomethings clutching wine glasses opened the front door.
"Twi Tweet?" asked our little girl.
"Oh, I'm so sorry -we're students so we really, really, really, really haven't got a thing to give you sweetheart . . . " They looked so crestfallen that I gave them each a sweet "in support of the student struggle".
As we approached the next front door, a stranger called out: "Hey - Caspar the Friendly Ghost - nice outfit!"
I was furious the man hadn't recognised my daughter's costume for what it really was.
"How dare you!" I yelled back. "She's not some American cartoon character. She's Alex from A Clockwork Orange."
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