"You dressing up tomorrow, Matt?" said Nathan.
"No," I said calmly and firmly. Call me old-fashioned but I'm not sure it's very wise to celebrate evil. I hoped he was joking. "How about you?" I said.
"Well yes, I think so. We're all off clubbing tomorrow night - but a lot of the costumes we saw were just so heavy, I figured I'd be boiling - plus it's pretty difficult to go to toilet in them, and they're so expensive and fiddly, some of those things. So... we're going as bananas."
"What?"
"Yeah, we've got banana suits. We'll get some fake blood as well, my mates and me, and we'll be like ... well, like bloody bananas."
"Ha!" said someone else eavesdropping over the partition. "You'll look like right nanas."
I rolled my eyes while the eavesdropper cackled to himself. He'll be laughing at that lightning-fast bit of humour all night I reckon. Nathan chuckled politely and then looked at me.
Yes, it's All Hallows' Eve. Tradition dictates that tomorrow we ward off evil spirits by taking the logical step of dressing up as them and inviting them in. To protect our children, we send them out to take sweets from strangers and we cover them with the stuff of nightmares. Meanwhile at home, we carve frightening faces into fruit and illuminate them with candles to prevent the need to be afraid of them. It's never made much sense to me, this dangerous, ludicrous and unwholesome evening.
Anyway, I'll be at something much more horripilating tomorrow night: the Engineering Curry Night. I said I wouldn't go to one of these again but it's Steve's last day and I thought it would be rude not to show up. However, if there's any nonsense with projectile popadoms or alcohol-fuelled mischief - or if there's that unbelievable tension over splitting the bill like there always is, then I might just go home.
Though there's every chance I might run into Nathan and his Banana Crew on the way to the train station - which is, by all standards, a terrifying thought.
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