Dialogue: Turning the tables on young tyrants

The hills are alive with the squeals of children. I've got a cageful of the little darlings all pleading for forgiveness, having dared to approach my battlements last week in their capes and plastic teeth, squealing "trick or treat" in bogus American accents.

Well, they got the trick and I got the treat and the dogs are still fetching in the stragglers. Not much warmth in those tinsel capes either, as the honeys are discovering these cool, spring Canterbury nights.

"Let us out, mister," they whine as I curl up on the rococo sofa smug with whisky. "We didn't mean no harm." Nor did I, as it happened; it just sort of turned out that way. Not that I haven't given them the chance of redemption.

"Tell me the historical and religious significance of Hallowe'en," I said, "and all will be forgiven." They shrugged what pass for shoulders.

Same thing happened to the Guy Fawkes mob last weekend. "Penny for the guy," they squeaked over a pramful of straw. Well, that was enough for me. Now they're all locked in the garage, howling like banshees while I toss an occasional cheap firework through the window.

They'll be there until they give me a decent biographical summary of Mr Fawkes, or at least an explanation of imperial currency. To give them a chance, I even slid an encyclopaedia through the grating, but most of the little devils couldn't read a word, and the only one who could looked up Guy Fawkes under cutlery.

Nice to turn the tables on the tyranny of youth. Not that it's all their fault, of course. About 10 years old, most of them, 10 years of advertising, television, video games and the Spice Girls, so it's hardly surprising they're as ignorant as suet.

As for any sense of historical perspective or the reasons for ritual, you might as well go scraping round for poets in the stock exchange.

And did you listen to the outcry over Hallowe'en? "Oh, gosh," say the adults, "it's just another ghastly American import."

Well, phooey to that for a start. Mother's Day, Father's Day, where do they come from? "Oh," we say, "but it's so commercial," we who do a third of our annual retail spending for the great religious bash of Christmas, which is a nice little import from the Middle East, that notorious bastion of peace and goodwill to all men.

Add a wallop of paganism and Teutonic solstice-worship and a plastic Christmas tree and things that unfurl and go toot when you blow in them and then we have a real cultural event of symbolic significance.

But the kiddies can't have one of their own. Oh no, Hallowe'en is sending out all the wrong signals.

The wrong signals? Surely it's sending out all the right signals. Spend money, make the economy boom, chisel as much as you can out of the old, weak and housebound, by terror if necessary, con the populace into paying for shoddiness - surely that's a better and more realistic lesson than they've had in school for many a long year.

That's the society they're being groomed for and then we moan when they turn out like us.

No, if you want to do something about the little beggars turning out wrong, you've got a couple of choices. One, of course, is to biff a brick through the telly, sell all shares in The Warehouse and go back to singing hymns round the piano with the servants and a roomful of family values.

The other way is my way and it's much more fun. Try beating the little darlings into submission. The cult of the child has gone on far too long.

The quaint 18th-century idea that they're all little angels whose self-esteem has been devastated by the traumas of industrial society got well and truly exploded in the French Revolution and at roughly 50-year intervals ever since.

But the whole of today's education system is founded on that mischievous little myth and look where it's got us: tides of ignorance seeping under the skirting boards.

No, far better to presume that the little ones are born twisted and all need straightening out to some degree or other, which is a far older notion known as the fall of man and which makes a sight more sense when faced with the reality of a classroom full of the little loves.

Once bitten twice shy, so bite them. They don't come back.

My Hallowe'en next year will be as peaceful as All Saints' Day. And there's an idea. All Saints' Day - what a marketing opportunity. Think of the merchandising, think of the slogans. Those saints were good guys. They'll be a doddle to sell.