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Pretentious middle-class family to celebrate Samhain instead

A MIDDLE-CLASS family has rejected celebrating Halloween in favour of the ancient pagan festival of Samhain. 

Tom and Emma Booker are ostentiously eschewing commercialised festivities in favour of a centuries-old tradition they first heard of while staying in a friend’s cottage in Ireland last week.

Emma said: “Halloween doesn’t really work for us because the children are sugar intolerant and our neighbours have such long driveways. This is much better.

“We learned about Samhain, yes that’s how it’s pronounced, when the Gaelic people say the spirits and the dead walk abroad, and we thought that’s much more us and doesn’t make it look like we patronise B&M.

“We’ll gather around the John Lewis firepit, enjoy Celtic delicacies, bid fond morrow to the harvest season then go out guising, which is a marvellous tradition of going from house to house in masks and asking for sweetmeats not to commit mischief.

“It’s so sad such traditions are being lost in a deluge of Americanism. Tom’s hollowing out a mangel wurzel to use as a lantern. It’s so much more authentic.”

Five-year-old Ethan said: “Because I have been denied Halloween, I will spend my teens and 20s as a goth.”

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Woman doing expensive things she hates to justify living in London

A LONDONER has spent the weekend engaged in high-cost activities she dislikes because otherwise she might as well live in Leicester. 

Sophie Rodriguez, a barrister who shares a three-bed apartment in zone four, went to see a painfully earnest play then for a meal out she will refer to as ‘totally incredible’ whenever justification for living in London is needed, which is often.

She said: “Where else can you see a blistering indictment of Britain’s colonial past the Guardian gave five stars then queue for Peruvian-Korean fusion? Where but London?

“The play was so powerful, by which I mean they shouted directly at us for two hours, and the food place doesn’t take reservations or have chairs but it was so incredible. You’d never have a night like that in Wrexham.

“When you’re living in one damp room and have a bathroom rota, you owe it to yourself to get out there and experience the best London has to offer. Well, not the best. The best for your price bracket which is more than you can afford.

“Okay, I’ll never be able to afford property, but who needs that when London offers the chance to wear an orange jumpsuit at an immersive prison cocktail experience? At £17 per gin?

“I wouldn’t live anywhere else. And best of all, now I’ve done this I won’t have to do it again for months.”

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