What were some of your favorite halloween costumes?

When I was little, in Scotland, we celebrated Halloween on the 31st. October. I only remember being big enough to go out 'guising' once. I don't remember being dressed up but I do remember going to some neighbours downstairs in the flats that we lived in, two old ladies I think, and having to do a 'party piece' before they gave us treats, apples I remember.

A 'party piece' was a song, or a rhyme or a dance we could perform. When we moved to England in 1952, they did not celebrate Halloween but rather Guy Fawkes, or Bonfire Night on November 5th. Guy Fawkes was more about a big fireworks party and a huge bonfire, tho' I do remember my Mum throwing a party for us and introducing some of the Scottish games for Halloween, which our English friends enjoyed. 'Dooking' for apples involved a big tin tub full of water with apples floating on it, you had to put your face in the water and try to bite into and catch an apple, with your hands behind your back.

Another game, I don't remember it's name, was a fruit bun slathered with black treacle hanging from a string and you had to try and take a bite out of it, with the obvious results! Best to do that one before you dooked for apples. There was also spooky tale telling in the dark about ghosts, where things were passed round the circle, I have vague recollections of liver and a cows eye, which of course you didn't know what it was. Almost more disgusting after the game was over and you found out what had been passed around, than terrifying while the story was told.

Costumes and dressing up were not part of Guy Fawkes, although making a 'Guy' to burn on the bonfire was. The guy was usually made of old clothes stuffed up with newspaper or straw. For a week or so before Guy Fawkes, boys would push the effigy around in a wheelbarrow asking people for 'a penny for the guy'... whether there was any folklore attached to that or whether it was just a convenient way of getting money for fireworks I don't know. The fireworks were always exciting, and being allowed to hold sparklers, tho' there were the inevitable burned fingers.

I remember the Mount Etnas and the Catherine Wheels and the Golden Fountains and of course the rockets, remembering that those days predated any exploration of space with real rockets I remember my brother David, as a wee thing, crying when a rocket went away up into the sky, he had wanted to keep it. After a moment or two of silence, it fell to earth, fizzled out, right by his feet so he did get to keep it. The crashes and thumps of Guy Fawkes night always terrified our dog, Rippy, he spent most of the evening under the kitchen sink in the potato basket, quivering.

I remember too the soggy remains of fireworks on the sidewalks as we walked to school over the next few, often rainy days. The bonfires were always enormous, usually a community effort on some waste ground - and I still remember the taste of a potato cooked properly in the embers of a real bonfire - no namby pamby tinfoil wrapped potatoes then. Your hands or probably your gloves, got black and charcoal' y and there was nothing quite like a bonfire potato to warm up your hands on a cold November night, before you tucked into it with salt and, best of all, some butter.

One thing that I think was done in both Scotland & England for Halloween and Guy Fawkes was making turnip lanterns. A turnip ( rutabaga) was hollowed out with some difficulty and a leering face carved into it - like todays pumpkin lanterns- and a candle set inside it.I can still recall the smell of 'cooking' turnip when the candle heated up the inside. I also remember the disappointment of carving the face, when the knife slipped and you lost one or two of the carefully carved teeth from your work of art.

Well, that hasn't been much about costumes has it? The whole dressing up thing seems to be a much more recent tradition, what todays kids will remember I guess.