The Dark Side

Although some of you in the UK and the US may have been plagued by small sugar-crazed bandits in fancy dress on Saturday night, Hallowe’en is actually tomorrow, 31st October. Otherwise known as All Hallows Eve, or All Saints Eve (Toussaint in French), it is the night when the dead are said to rise and wreak havoc on the living, and so must be appeased with gifts.

In Poland everyone goes to the cemetery and places candles in coloured jars on the graves. Shortly after nightfall the cemeteries look like discothèques with flickering coloured lights and a constant flow of people. It’s all rather convivial and not in the least scary. The Roma gypsies congregate on the graves of their departed with guitars and sing songs, some even have picnics. The cemetery is the place to go in Poland on All Saints Eve or Wszystkych Świętach as it is called in Polish. And if you can say that, you’re sober enough to drive home. On 1st November, All Saints Day, the roads of Poland are gridlocked with people driving all over the country with a carboot full of votive candles (which are sold in bulk packs in the supermarkets) visiting their dead relatives wherever they may be. I refer you to my Hallowe’en piece from 2001, which will show you how seriously Harold took it.

In reality of course, All Saints or Hallowe’en, whatever you choose to call it, is a festival to mark the beginning of winter, and so it is fitting that it should have dark overtones, to get us in the mood for the long cold winter months. It now coincides nicely with the weekend of putting the clocks back. Summer is officially over, and all is safely gathered in. I rather like these reminders of the changes in the seasons. The way global warming is going, soon it will be the only way we’ll be able to keep track of the months - I still haven’t felt the need to put any heating on, it is unnaturally warm for the time of year here in Brussels.

Of course Harold is the dear departed now, and I am afraid I cannot visit his final resting place as he is buried somewhere in West Africa inside a giant beer bottle. His grieving subjects pour a libation of Star beer on his grave every Friday evening, so I have sent them a few quid by Western Union to buy him two pints of lager and a packet of crisps from me. I hope he doesn’t come back to haunt me. I avoid wearing red to bed, on the advice of Guyana-Gyal, as it reportedly brings the dead to life in a way most graphically described by the Rolling Stones in their seminal work “Start me up”. Harold thought the marital bed was a place for listening to the footie on Radio 5 Live whilst eating crisps.

Witchcraft is taken very seriously in West Africa, as you will see from the local press. Godwin, our faithful driver, despite being a devout Christian, was a firm believer in the black arts. He told me once about a woman who had reportedly turned into a bird in front of an entire village. “Godwin,” I asked him, “Did you see this with your own eyes?” Godwin looked a bit sheepish. “No, Madame,” he replied. “Well how do you know it happened?” I insisted. Godwin looked shocked. “Madame, it was in de newspaper!” he protested. Their faith in the veracity of the press is as unshakeable as their faith in the Church, witchcraft and the IMF. Touching. But not helping much.

I suspect I have witchy tendencies myself. I feel responsible for the death of Princess Diana, as the night before her untimely demise I made a throwaway remark along the lines of “I wish that woman would just disappear.” When I saw how quickly my wish had been granted, I started wishing very hard that Harold would turn into George Clooney, but I think I must have used up all my witchiness on Diana, as he never did.

I have finally finished the first volume of Philip Pullmann’s trilogy “His Dark Materials”, and am quite hooked. The book features a rather fetching witch by the name of Serafina Pekkala, who is just the sort of witch you’d like to be able to call up in a crisis. Samantha from “Bewitched” was a delightful modern witch. But my favourite witch of all time is the Good Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz, who gave Dorothy the Ruby Slippers. Any friend of Dorothy is a friend of mine.