The Death of Halloween

Last week, while shopping for food with my ten-year-old, we bought a few bags of sweets and chocolate for Halloween. No one was allowed to taste any before the 31st, so I stored them away in my study.

Only, I couldn’t resist temptation one evening and stole a few pieces of individually wrapped chocolate. There was plenty to go round so no one would notice that I’d taken some. Except, my ten-year-old daughter did because she found the empty wraps in my wastepaper basket and suspected foul play. On discovering that a bag of chocolates had been tampered with, she immediately confronted me.

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The Hunger Games

I know I said I wouldn’t blog about politics, but I have to backtrack because it seems everything is political these days.

Yesterday 322 British MPs voted down a motion to provide 1.4 disadvantaged children in England with £15-a-week food vouchers during school holidays until Easter 2021. In other words, elected members of parliament voted against measures that would help alleviate food poverty among children in their own constituencies.

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Are you listening?

As a child, I used to love listening to stories about my parents’ youthful adventures, misbehaviours and the like, but my own children act as if my husband and I didn’t have a life before we became parents.

At the beginning of the summer, the 14-year-old exclaimed that when she grows up, she shan’t live a boring life like her parents.

“Sweetheart,” I replied, “our lives weren’t boring until we had children.”

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