Ted is pump’ed

… please don’t tell my “kin” … get it “pumpkin”. Alright alright I’ll keep my day job – or better still I may even get one. One thing is for sure though, I am not very keen on venturing out alone with all this Halloween activity and current mad clown hysteria going on in the UK … it's just too late now ... 

So how did the poor little member of the squash family known fondly by elderly Aunts (with whole bedside cabinets full of “regifting” soap and handkerchiefs just waiting for a child’s birthday opportunity … but I digress) as Cucurbita Pepo, get involved in quite frankly scary shit.  

Essentially it got itself into all this trouble simply by the colour of its skin - oh how the world moves on … orange being the colour of celebration for the days of the dead in Mexico, when those that have departed this mortal coil (adults and children) are remembered and given gifts and food for another year in the afterlife.  The pumpkins' place in modern “European” Halloween is thought to have originated a long time back in Ireland. Pumpkin carvings are supposed to represent the “Jack O’Lantern” a knowledge and tradition that I fear is being quite quickly lost … usurped by scary costumes with a preponderance to blood and more than just a nod to the Friday the 13^th movies.

The story goes that Jack was met by the devil and through various tricks, no doubt aided by a surfeit of Irish Whiskey (yes with an “e”) managed to trap the Devil up a tree and made him agree never to take him into hell.  The Devil kept his word and when Jack wasn’t (of course) admitted to Heaven he came to the Devil who threw him a hot hell coal to keep him warm … Knife in hand he looked around for something to put it in that would provide him with light and warmth and scare off predators … enter Cucurbita Pepo for ever more.

Fast forward and today it is an American institution to carve pumpkins into modern day Jack O’Lanterns, and it’s taken rather seriously indeed … this year’s overall winners … wait for it … NASA. Moving immediately forward to a yet another take on Halloween sans pumpkins (in anything but the supporting cast anyway) and it’s none other than Tom Hanks as David S Pumpkins, although the critics have kinda squashed the show.

Last, and certainly missing a few millennia of human evolution, it’s that roadkill wearing Trumpkin … be afraid be very very afraid … for the whole world …