‘At the height of the Troubles, Halloween took hold in Derry like nowhere else’

Halloween has always been the seasonal occasion I love most, although I pre-date the pumpkin invasion of Ireland.

At the risk of sounding like Blackadder’s Baldrick, my late father used to laboriously hack at a raw turnip with his penknife, creating a rough jack-o’-lantern with the stub of a candle saved for electricity blackouts. It was the 1980s.

He would then, with a screwdriver, painstakingly drive a hole into the hard, hairy shell of the coconut he bought once a year. He never took the easy path. I hope we told him the watery milk he poured out of the tropical fruit that had travelled so far to get to Derry was delicious, after all his effort, but I doubt we had the grace.

Halloween was wild, unruly and so much fun. I'm old enough to remember some bold souls dressed up as RUC men, stopping traffic

Halloween started off simple for us children. We were wizards, warlocks and witches with pointy cardboard hats, clutching plain white plastic bags to collect sweets and, in those days, nuts from neighbours, who would feign ignorance of our true identities when we trick-or-treated.

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We stood in wonder staring into the bonfire constructed in our estate, and we weren’t even Protestants. Nobody cared ‘round our way, as far as we knew anyway.

We were spellbound by simple sparklers: sliding those slender metal rods from their paper packet, watching them sizzle, stutter and spit into a tiny incandescent frenzy before burning themselves out. We bobbed for apples in a basin of water and tried to chomp a bite from a swinging Granny Smith tied to string suspended from a door frame.

As we got older, we began to up the stakes on the costume front. I was Darth Vadar and my brother a Stormtrooper, fighting fierce battles in the dark with battery-powered lightsabres.

At the height of the Troubles, Halloween celebrations took hold in Derry like nowhere else.

It was a decent-sized city, by Irish standards, and with a large youthful population yearning to party, but bands deemed it too dangerous to come and perform there. Except for Orange marching bands, but that wasn’t our scene.

We had to amuse ourselves, so everyone dressed up and rollicked through the walled town on October 31st. Halloween was wild, unruly and so much fun. I’m old enough to remember some bold souls dressed up as RUC men, stopping traffic.

I was unmasked as the night wore on, and the shocked cry went up: 'It's a wee girl!'

The council recognised the tourism potential and got involved, doing a good job of making the festivities a lot more family-friendly and a little less debauched, but still creative and delightfully unhinged. An event you’d always try to make it home for.

One year, life in Dublin was particularly busy and I landed up in Derry with no costume. Luckily, my brother had recently been employed to promote bananas in a supermarket and had retained the gorilla costume. Or perhaps that was his payment for the gig. Anyway, I didn’t need to think twice.

I met my friends, Zombie Air Hostess and Willy Wonka, in town, bounding towards them, swinging around a lamp post. Unlike the neighbours of my childhood, they really had no idea who I was until I unmasked myself.

As we strode up the street where the pubs are named after our Donegal hinterland, it occurred to me that the night promised untold possibilities.

I squared my shoulders and broadened my stride to a swagger. No one knew who, or what, I was. This costume could give me access in a way that couldn’t happen in normal circumstances.

In the pub we saw other pals, Spooky Ladybird and Bunch of Grapes, and they settled in a snug.

But I gravitated towards a lively group of men at the other end of the bar, who soon adopted me as a sort of mascot and included me in their anecdote-telling, playfully thumping my upper arm or ruffling my head when they got to the punchlines of their jokes, saying “isn’t that right, wee man?”

I nodded enthusiastically but remained mute, raising a furry paw to clink drinks with them in what I hoped was a masculine manner, then slipping my beer bottle under my mask for a sip, all the while rocking with laughter inside my suit. I might have done an appreciative little moonwalk through the group at one point.

Inevitably, I was unmasked as the night wore on, and the shocked cry went up: “It’s a wee girl!” I was 28.

I made like one of the fruits my brother had recently been promoting, and split.

Tomorrow night we'll trick or treat in Dublin, if Dr Tony says it's okay this year. The kids will beat me at the traditional apple games, and I'll regret getting my buck teeth straightened with braces.

We’re in the cute Halloween decorations phase which, as my boys get older, I expect to evolve into the gory phase.

One of our pumpkins is carved to look like Steve from Minecraft, while a projector throws images of tumbling purple bats on to the wall, and silly skeletons dangle from every nook.

The broadcaster John Kelly says, in one of his poems, that Christmas is the time we "drink too much and most miss the dead", but for me that's always been Halloween.

There is something to be said for gently teaching children death is part of life and that, for one night only – amid all the rattling plastic bones and fake tombstones – we might even dare to laugh in its face. derryhalloween.com