Perhaps I'm a bit of a killjoy, but I've never quite seen the point of Halloween. It's a fairly recently imported tradition in the UK, so there's not really any consensus about how to celebrate it, or indeed whether it should be celebrated at all. I wouldn't mind so much if we got adorable little kids dressed up as ghosts or witches coming round. However, in our neighbourhood, we get 16 year olds who haven't even bothered to dress up (unless you count hoodies as fancy dress), who just hammer indiscriminately on doors. Without some kind of long-standing tradition of everyone providing 'treats', or a pre-arrangement between neighbours with kids, I think that this amounts to a protection racket: give us sweets or your front door gets egged!

This year, I just pretended to be out when the trick-or-treaters came round. I was working in the office upstairs, but Cleo threatened to blow my ploy to lie low by miaowing loudly at the kids when they rattled the letterbox and shouted through it. She was getting quite agitated, so I was trying to stage-whisper reassurance to her from upstairs to calm her down and draw her away from the door, without being seen or heard by the kids. In the end, we all survived, and the house remained unmolested by eggs.