Modern Halloween, as in kids getting dressed up and going trick-or-treating, is not a traditional Spanish festival. In fact, the Spanish Bishops are getting a bit hot under the collar about the whole thing and are urging parents not to dress up their kids in costumes in celebration of this pagan event.

That doesn’t seem to bother my neighbour, Lola, much. She has been fussing and fretting over her kids’ costumes since the beginning of the month and seems quite bewildered at my lukewarm attitude. To be honest, I am just delighted that Gaga and her sidekick, Linda, are going to be throwing a party for the local kids which gives me the excuse to go out for a bit of kid-free gallivanting of my own. Let’s face it, Sami is a wee diablo for much of the year anyway, while Hania, well let’s just say she can be a little bruja when she feels like it.

Regardless of what the Bishops have to say, you can guarantee that unless you are smart and offl0ad the kids and shoot off out for the night or sit in pitch blackness with the telly off, your front door is going to ring off its hinges on Saturday night. So, just to help you out, I have prepared a little  list so that you  may have the right response handy.

Just fill in the blanks…

¡Caramba! ¡Qué un esqueleto espantoso! (Yikes! What a scary skeleton!)

• monster = monstruo
• witch = bruja
• fantasma = ghost
• vampiro = vampire
• werewolf = hombre lobo
• zombi = zombie

If you are having a party of your own, then there is nothing that screams Halloween more than pumpkin soup for which Andy Montgomery has provided a devilish recipe in the new online Tenerife Magazine.

And finally, I’d like to leave you with a little Halloween riddle that has bothered me for some time. Why do witches never have babies? Because warlocks have hollow weenies. Bwahahahah

So there we were, obviously a shifty looking crew, me, two kids, a grandmother and a big daft dog with a halter-type face mask on. We were plodding along the street at snail’s pace, the dog, huge as he is was neither pulling nor showing any interest in anything other than his ‘weans’ as he likes to keep an eye on them when they are gadding about.

On the other side of the street, a wee hairy mop of a dog was yapping its head off and slinging bribes in our direction, but Tito, to his credit, didn’t blink an eye at it.

That didn’t stop a police car from coming to a stop a couple of feet ahead of us and the coppers inside it, giving me a stern talking to about the fact the dog didn’t have a muzzle on. Actually the face mask he was wearing gives me more control than a muzzle would and also effectively pulls his mouth shut if there were to be any trouble. The pc on the other side of the car got our and bobbed about shouting that this was a dangerous dog. “No, he’s not!” my mother scoffed while Tito threw himself to the ground with a huge sigh of boredom.

Only a couple of days before an elderly lady had been mugged in the area by three local boys on a scooter. One got her round the neck, while a second grabbed her bag. In total they got away with about €150 in booty but they left the woman feeling very shaky and upset. Worst of all is that the locals say even the police know who the wee thugs are but can’t touch them because they are under 16.

Meanwhile, Tito’s eyes had glazed over and he rolled on his side totally disgusted with this interruption to our pleasant family walk. We were finally let off the hook after being threatened with a steep fine and assorted dire penalties if the dog was not wearing a muzzle the next time they saw me with him.

Do you think it would have made a difference if I told the police that Tito was under 16?