Hallowe'en.

It's All Hallows Eve. It's Halloween. I just went trick-or-treating for the first time ever with my little one and it was magical. I thought it would probably be quite fun, but it was really a wonderful thing to be part of. People complain about how commercial it is and all the plastic, in the costumes and wrapping the sweets, and worry about all the sweets and chocolate and treats that children collect and consume, but all of that paled in comparison to the sheer beauty and wonder and surreal joy of it all. To wander the streets, in costume, meeting dozens of other children also all in costume doing the same, and call to the houses of strangers, who are expecting you and want you to call in, who have gone to enormous effort to decorate their homes and who welcome the children at the door with treats they have gotten in specially to give to them, that so many of the adults at the doors have dressed up too, that everyone is participating in this, just by themselves, no organisation or corporate entity behind it, everyone interpreting it in their own way, and it's such a wonderful thing for the kids to experience this, this welcome, this extraordinary amid the ordinary, this community. Above all it was the sense of community. Of everyone doing something together, but in their own way.

To watch it and how my child and the other children were experiencing it, how they loved it, so much joy from so little and yet so much. And it brought me back to happy times in my own childhood, which was also so precious. And it wasn't at all about the sweets or the treats, my child didn't want anything except satsumas and bananas and maybe some jellies, it wasn't at all about getting all this 'stuff' but about the incredible joy of getting to knock on strangers' doors and them be opened happily, getting to have this kind of party with their friends and other children and parents on the street, everyone dressed up, everyone having fun. And many people had made their costumes, or their parents had. There was a cardboard box robot with light up buttons, there was a wrapped birthday present made of a huge cardboard box, there was a giant handmade snake curving out of a garden. There were so many carved pumpkins, many of them works of art, and carved turnips alongside them. There was just so much joy, and so much togetherness, and so much effort and reward. I felt lucky and grateful to be part of it. It was all about community. Another world is closer to us tonight. I hope we can reach it on other nights too.