Although the tradition of celebrating Halloween was started in Europe by Pagans it has long been a popular annual celebration here in America.

Unlike the UK, in America the vast majority of people take part in the festivities (apparently something like 80% of adults give out candy and 93% of children go out trick-or-treating).

Anyway, here’s the Halloween agenda:

1. Get a Pumpkin:

No problem there. Plenty to choose from at our local grocery store.

2. Decorate the house, and any children you might have:

3. Go out and trick-or-treating and return with your stash:

Now, one treat we weren’t expecting in our trick-or-treat bags was this:

Yes, not satisfied with taking up most of the TV schedule with their adverts slagging each other off they have to get politics into Halloween!

And now you’ve got me started on election-related advertising. As well as the position of Commander-in-Chief there are many other official roles due for re-election on Tuesday, amongst them Harris County Sheriff (Tommy Thomas says Adrian Garcia smoked Marijuana 100 times and Adrian Garcia says Tommy Thomas used taxpayers money to pay for a fence on his $1,000,000 ranch - which one is worse?) , State Senators, US Senators, Supreme Court Judges and even the County Tax Assessor (Paul Bettencourt is the current holder of this position. You write your cheques out to “Paul Bettencourt” when paying for your vehicle license, which sounds a bit suspicious - wouldn’t you expect to pay the “Department of Motor Vehicles” or something similar?). The results for Tuesday’s elections here in Harris County will run to 37 pages!

Anyway, with all this election advertising we don’t know what to buy in the shops now because there are no product adverts!

One welcome Halloween treat today was this:

After missing the chance to try Garrett’s Popcorn in their hometown of Chicago, a 2 gallon (yes, 2 gallon) tub arrived in the post tonight (many thanks to D & K). And yes, it its fantastic...