Trick or Treat!

[tielan]

Due to a lack of time/energy/the garden trail happening this weekend, I didn't arrange for any decorations on the house, and my attempt at setting up a visual display might be better for Christmas.

Or, possibly, advertising the garden trail in the coming week.

A local FB group organised to have a list of houses that were available for ToT-ing in the area. It's not a widespread practice around here, and the general gist is "if they've got a display up, then they're open for treating", but they decided to make a list of addresses and publish it a couple of hours before the end of school.

The problem turned up this morning when a number of people said they didn't get any trick-or-treaters in their street.

I suspect what happened is that rather than kids wandering around their neighbourhood, meeting neighbours and developing community, parents drove their kids off to the 'good spots', where many houses in a neighbourhood were set up for treating. Which is fine if the object is "get as many treats as possible, he who dies with the most treats wins".

However, if one of the side-effects of treating is to build and develop community - to meet neighbours, to admire decorations, to be more socially minded - then this kind of treating basically fails that test. It's a very capitalistic mindset, of course: 'what's in it for me' rather than 'what's in it for the community' so it's no wonder that it's the developing standard.

Still, it is perhaps a little sad.

I had hockey and my sister had work, so neither of us were home and we have no kids, so there was no point in decorating.

I am always going to be bitter that 2020 - the year where Halloween fell on a Saturday, in a year which could have been our "130th Birthday Celebration", when we were just feeling comfortable enough with the house to invite people over - more or less flaked out on us thx to the panda.

*grumps*

--

In trickortreatex, I have only one gift, but it's an excellent one!

Lady of the House (340 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bridgerton (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Anthony Bridgerton/Kate Sharma
Characters: Kate Sharma, Anthony Bridgerton
Additional Tags: Autumn, References to hunting, Ladies Shoot Too
Summary:

"Ladies do not shoot," declared Anthony.

"I do," said Kate.

I have written one treat and - somewhat surprisingly - one trick.

And there's the epic. Which is presently at ~1500 and counting. GRARGH.