Are you all ready for Halloween? Of course you are, you are all fabulous organised parents who are putting the final touches to your spider cupcakes while you read this. Me- yeah, I got it covered…..

1) Forget to buy a pumpkin. The only three left in your supermarket have big squashy holes that smell bad. Drive to every shop in a ten mile radius, find one in a corner shop. Pay excessive amount for it.

2) Carve a pumpkin so badly your kids are ashamed to put it in the window. The insult is all the harder to bear because you almost needed stitches as a result of bad knifemanship. And the entire house smells of burnt pumpkin seeds, because you tried to make a nutritious snack but forgot they were in the oven until the smoke alarm went off.

3) Forget to sort out costumes. So while all the neighbours kids have smart off the peg costumes, one of yours is dressed as Action Man, even though they don’t remember who Action Man is and wanted to be a Moshi Monster. Their costume consists of their own vaguely khaki clothes and mud on their face from the garden. The other is dressed as a Mummy by being wrapped in loo roll. ‘But I look nothing like you,’ they whimper.

4) Forget to buy sweets for trick or treaters. When the lunchbox treats run out, you are forced to offer tins of kidney beans from the stockpile you bought in case of emergencies, and when they get rejected you have to give them cash. You offer 50p, but when that gets sneered at you up it to a pound. Then all the other kids on the street hear you are giving out cash and come back to try and exchange their 2 finger kit-kat, forcing you to turn all the lights out and pretend you have gone to bed. It is half past 6.

5) Fondly remember your own innocent hallowe’ens – no trick or treating, just an apple in a washing up bowl of cold water which your face was dunked into for too long by the tough kids at Brownies.

6) Get kids into bed, sob into your glass of wine that you have ruined the ‘magic’ of Halloween for them, vow to do better for Bonfire Night. You will probably forget, but it is the thought that counts right?!

7) Spend half the night consoling 5 year old who is having nightmares as a result of neighbours rather too convincing Zombie outfit. Get revenge by tipsily using the loo roll from the Mummy costume to decorate his car.

Happy Halloween Y’All, I am sure yours will be far better than mine usually are!

Love Miss Cisco XXX