WHY HALLOWEEN GIVES ME THE HUMP ...

It’s that time of the year again folks: Halloween. Just as you were beginning to actually enjoy the heat of summer, BAM! October 31st comes rolling around the corner, slapping you in the face.

As a kid, I never really got into the whole Halloween thing. All my classmates would plan their Batman or truck driver costumes weeks in advance. They would build up the suspense and tension for the big moment when they could cover their faces with a mask that not only cut all visibility, but it also made breathing next to impossible. Not to mention the flaking, toxic Chinese paint they used to colour them. 

And don’t forget that god damn rubber band. Kids were constantly screaming in agony because that rubber band that holds the mask on would break and nearly cut an eyeball open. You’re no longer a kid anymore, and Halloween just isn’t what it used to be. 

Relevant Halloween traditions went toilet-flushy-bye sometime after I reached the socially legal trick-or-treating age. It used to be fun as hell to turn your garage into a makeshift haunted house for the neighbour kids and send dad out in coveralls with a fake chainsaw to hide in the shrubs and scare the bejeeus out of off all the shameless candy beggars. 

Today all the carousing has gone away for fear of litigation, loss of rental deposits and possibly just laziness. It's less effort to download Halloween apps on to the kiddies' iPhones than to teach them how to plant fake insects or bob for apples -- and this makes Halloween so boring it might as well be Tuesday night at Applebee's.

Still, it's possible to can commit a few pranks on Halloween night without serious injury or property damage. Do a polite ring-and-run, give out cans of potted meat instead of candy, maybe even toilet paper your own house and blame someone else for it.

And where have all the homemade treats gone? It's really too bad you aren't allowed to give out homemade treats on Halloween; every year, you have to wrestle with whether to save cash by giving out cheap candy or be the cool house with the fun-size Butterfingers. Fresh-baked cookies, rice Krispies treats and popcorn balls would be a welcome change and a genuine money-saver -- if you don't subscribe to the theory that some out there are determined to bake razor blades into their brownies. 

Eating a whole bag of Sour Patch Kids was fine when you were 10, but now it’ll just do you dirty. Really dirty. For the love of corn syrup and citric acid, just drop the bag and avoid the stomach ache while you still can.

Trick-or-treating isn't even fun anymore. People are so paranoid these days that old-fashioned, door-to-door trick-or-treating has been effectively replaced by zoo-boo, mall-walking and the bane of the Halloween holiday: trunk-or-treating. 

Instead of enjoyable neighbourhood candy-soliciting, the kiddos can go to a parking lot to collect a few handfuls of raisin boxes, toothbrushes and gluten-free caramels from car trunks and then stick around for four more hours while trying to get their gossipy, pumpkin spice latte-fuelled parents' attention. Staking out rich people's houses, predicting candy offerings by lawn-care techniques and practicing social skills by actually talking to people you don't already know are some of the things that made Halloween great.

Trick or treating is seriously one of the craziest and most unsafe things a parent can allow their child to do. Think about it. You put your kid in an outfit that they can’t breathe in, they are sweating to death under the layers upon layers of polar grade clothing under their plastic costume, then they are sent into the dark streets to play Frogger with traffic and go to stranger’s homes and ask for candy that hopefully isn’t poisoned with asbestos. 

Trick-or-treat sounds more like a threat than a good time, and substituting this for the traditional dress-rehearsal-for-life, outside trick-or-treating sadly reinforces the community-killing theory that kids aren't safe leaving their porches. “Trick or treat!” Nope. “Give me candy.” Still nope. No one gives you candy with three magic words anymore. In fact, that ended a long time ago. Now, you’re the one expected to hand out the free stuff. You can try and avoid it all you want, but you won’t stop getting knocks at the door ’til you cave.

Going out? You wish. Because Halloween falls on a weekday, and you’re expected to be up bright and smiling the next morning for school, it’s more than likely that you’ll be sitting in bed watching “Halloweentown” and binging on candy corn. Even when we shouldn’t go out though, some of us still do (if you don’t fall into the category above). The difference is we used to get euphoric sugar highs after Halloween. Now, we just get hangovers drag on for days.

Even Pumpkin carving’s a pain. Where do we start? Pumpkins are expensive (for a college student’s budget at least), carving takes so much effort and the stringy pumpkin guts that get stuck in your fingers are actually revolting. You’re better off just buying a pumpkin and attacking it with a pack of stickers.

Halloween is pointless, but there is one thing that I truly get a kick out of every year. I love going to work and trying to pick out the co-workers that were at costume parties over the weekend. It’s easy to spot them. They are the ones that have an odd blue hue to their skin because their Blue Man Group make up has penetrated their pores. 

Or, you can find someone that still has a little bit of green Hulk makeup behind their ear. The best are the people that have had the inside of their mouth torn to bits by those tortuous plastic, glow in the dark Dracula teeth. 

Good luck eating lunch.

Ironically, in 3 weeks time I'll be dressing up myself, for something much more appropriate.

It'll be Birmingham MCM Comic Con, and I'll be going as the Doctor.

YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE (PART II)

Apologies to you first of all, for the fact my last post was a load of rubbish. I genuinely couldn’t think of anything funny to rant about so I resorted to that last bastion of a bored blogger with nothing to do except wait until the end of the year so I can sleep for two weeks solid, and wrote some gumph about food and calorie counting.

I must have bored you to sleep. Speaking of which, did you know that sleep is underrated ?? According to experts, it is as important to your health as exercise, nutrition, avoiding hungry Bengal tigers and not being accidentally set on fire. And it's quite possibly the easiest route to self-improvement and happiness imaginable.

All you have to do is just lie around doing nothing for eight solid hours, genius !! It’s so simple, even the second-generation offspring of a village idiot and a GMTV weathergirl could do it.

Nowadays, you can’t really count on much anymore. But one thing is for sure: two times a year, the time is shifted. Once a year, in fall, we win one hour, which I am personally very excited about every year, since there is one more hour for sleep, cuddling or whatever comes to my mind … But when I think about the time in spring, when the clock will be shifted from 3 am to 4 am and we loose one hour, my stomach gets a little upset – it’s a pretty bad loss, that hurts very much.

Yet amazingly, concerned health campaigners apparently want Britain's schoolchildren to be given "sleep lessons" to teach them the benefits of regular night-long kip. This is actually quite an exciting development, because it raises the prospect of "sleep exams" – practical snoozing assessments that even the dumbest school kid could master with their eyes closed, sounds perfect.

It's easy to sleep when you're a kid. Your mind and body skitter around all day until they burn themselves out, leaving you blissfully knackered when the sun goes down. You've really only got two modes: on and off, kind of like a modern toaster.

But once you reach adulthood, things are altogether less binary. You've got responsibilities and concerns, not to mention an alarm clock with a sarcastically oversized face sitting beside the bed gleefully mocking any attempt at getting some shuteye.

Chances are you've spent your day mumbling at your co-workers, bumping into office furniture and performing many mundane chores. Your brain spends the day in a state of drowsy, languid semi-consciousness, and only decides to spring into life when it’s time for the lights to go out.

The insomniac brain is a bit like a fleshy i-Pod, your skull is pre-loaded with various modes with for several hours. Sometimes your companion is a peppy irritant who passes the time by humming half-remembered 1980’s TV theme tunes until you have the urge to garrotte them with their own underpants.

Other times it's a critic who has recently compiled a 1,500-page report on your life so far and wants to run you over with it a few times before going to print. Worst of all is the hyperactive sports reporter who delivers an uninterrupted running commentary describing which bits of your body are currently the least comfortable. No matter where you put that leg, he won't be satisfied, he's convinced your jaw could unlock with a yawn and you’ve almost certainly got the world’s itchiest bottom.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, that well known professional Austrian and part-time mysogynist, describes that he gets up early to complete a training session. Afterwards, he has breakfast, feeds his furry companion and includes some play time. He calls his kids to tell them that he loves them, reads one or two scripts and informs himself in German and English newspapers about actual happenings. “At this time it’s about 5 o’clock in the morning” he says.

This is the point at which "sleep lessons" might actually come in handy. That's when you need all the help you can get. But before the experts get too carried away, let’s have practical tips only, please. No one needs to be told how important it is for your health. We've all experienced the aftermath of a sleepless night, especially after a heavy session in the Austin Sports & Social Club.

I've even got a phrase for it: "time-poisoning".

Anyway, here's a list of some of my own sleeping "dos and don'ts" guaranteed to give you a good night's slumber.

1) DO keep your eyes closed. Amazingly, this helps a lot.

2) DON'T try to convince yourself you're asleep by making comical snoring noises that sound like an angry polar bear chewing a chainsaw in a wind tunnel.

3) DO focus on slowing your breathing down as much as possible. Imagine there's a speed camera at the end of the bed pointing at your face that can photograph air. If you inhale or exhale too quickly, it'll fire a sharpened steel bolt straight into your forebrain.

4) DON'T go to bed wearing a makeshift crown fashioned from old coat hangers and jingle bells - if you do, don't sit upright violently shaking your head from side to side.

5) DO keep the "worrying cells" of your brain occupied. Imagine you're a contestant on Countdown, but try not to picture the gigantic clock … If you start thinking about that, quickly interrupt yourself by imagining Jeff Stelling throwing to an ad break.

6) DON'T stay in bed if you haven't fallen asleep within 30 mins. Instead, get up and do something practical, such as drive a car, operate some heavy machinery or retype “The Fourth Protocol” with your feet.

7) DO drink nine litres of warm milk before bed. Lace it with some crushed diphenhydramine if you feel.

There, simples. Nighty-Night.