Hi I’m Nick Simcock. I’m an English language coach. I help Italians to unlock their English. In this podcast today I want to talk about my memories of Halloween.

From all the different festivities in England that I remember, Christmas, Bonfire Night, birthdays, Easter, I think the most magical was Halloween and I have some great memories. They’re divided up into three main things, choosing a costume to wear to go trick or treating in, making a Jack-o’-lantern, making a … carving a pumpkin, and then also yeah, going out and doing the trick or treating, which was like just so exciting, really really so exciting.

So first yeah, we had to choose the costume, something scary, something freaky, there was often blood involved so a lot of red paint. What else did we do? There was always someone with a big rubber mask, big wigs, white skin, fake wounds on… you know made out of plasticine on your skin, fangs put over your own teeth, and yeah

we would have a lot of fun dressing up I remember. And I think children in general love dressing up because you adopt a different character. I think it’s just … it’s great fun dressing up, I think dressing up is brilliant.

And then the second part was also making a Jack-o’-lantern, or simply carving a turnip, because the old tradition, and I believe it comes from Ireland, is carving a turnip not a pumpkin. And that’s what we did when we were children. I don’t ever remember carving a pumpkin but my my Mum would come home with turnips

and they were really tough to carve, and they’re solid in the middle, so you have to scoop out and carve out the middle of the pumpkin [turnip], and I always remember we had a few blisters on our hands or fingers after we’d done all the work. And then Mum or Dad would help us to… with a sharp knife to carve out the eyes

nose and the mouth. And I remember also we used to put some holes in the side so we could

attach a string so we could carry our lantern. And then we put a small candle inside. And I can still smell today the, you know the burning turnip, from the candle inside, and so yeah I remember that.

I remember my parents being very worried that we were going to burn ourselves with the candle or cut ourselves with the knife. So yeah if you do this with your children you have to be careful so they don’t hurt themselves.

And then I remember we took the lantern, our little turnips, carved turnips with us when we were trick or treating.

We used to go out and about, and I remember our/my Mum wouldn’t let us light the candle, “No you can’t light the candle, it’s dangerous with all the costumes, and the clothes might catch fire!

So then came the third part: the trick or treating. And going out trick or treating was fantastic. It was so exciting. And we came home from school we couldn’t wait for it to go dark and go outside. We lived on a small housing estate and there were always the houses to avoid. And so either we knew or my mom said “Don’t go to number 14, Mrs Grumpy (that’s a made up name) doesn’t like trick or treaters. Or maybe there was someone who was very religious and didn’t really like the festival: “No, we don’t like that sort of thing here, go away!” And so in the end you ended up going to your friend’s parents’ houses, and then doing trick or treat.

One thing I think is interesting here in Italy is that when children go trick or treating here they say “Dolcetto scherzetto” and then they just wait for the treats, they wait for the sweets, or you know the sugary things. But in England, or at least it didn’t work like that when I was a child, trick or treating is ‘trick’ or ‘treat’ è ‘dolcetto’ or ‘scherzetto’, and so the person who answers the door has a choice: if they say ‘treat’ then they have to give you some sweets, if they say ‘trick’ then you have to perform a trick. And so the person who answers/opens the door has to run a risk, they make the choice, or shall send them away with some sweets, or shall I risk saying ‘trick’, because if you say ‘trick’ then something nasty might happen. You might get toilet roll in your trees in your garden, you might get flour thrown at you.

I distinctly have a memory of my Dad answering the door to a boy when I was a child, and I was standing behind my Dad, and my dad said ‘trick’. So the boy came up to the door, ‘ding dong’, my Dad opened the door, “Trick or treat” my dad: “trick”. And this boy threw a huge quantity of flour and raisins all into our house. And for me as a child it was quite scary, I was quite traumatised by the whole event! And so, yeah I have a really clear memory of that moment. So yeah, the tricks were like you know, doing a false hand that came out of your costume, or maybe telling a joke, things like that, so yeah it was very different in England trick or treat was really ‘trick’ or ‘treat’!

So if you’re out with your children this Halloween then make sure you have a very safe Halloween, stay away from knives if you’re carving pumpkins at least with your children, and don’t burn yourself with candles, and please be respectful for people if they don’t answer the door when you’ve knocked or rang the bell then leave them in peace. But have a very fun super spooky Halloween and I’ll speak to you in the next podcast.

My name is Nick Simcock. You have listened to my audio podcast.

Thanks for listening, I’ll speak to you very soon.

Ciao for now