What's your Halloween plan for your kilt?

[Peter Crowe]

I really don't recall any Halloween type things in the rural Highlands in my youth, perhaps partly because there was a war going on. After the war in the rural highlands where lack of transport and distances were a real hinderance to life, it was only weddings and funerals where there were any significant gathering of family and friends. In passing I don't recall Halloween being mentioned down South in England until the late 1990's.Now transport, communications, television for all that raise people's expectations which go to make the world a smaller place and I suppose one of the consequences of that is these "celebrations" are now almost common knowledge worldwide.

Knowing Lochaber and the western Highlands more generally, that makes perfect sense Jock. My parents also grew up with war-time and post-war shortages (rationing wasn't finally over until 1954), and many of these traditions we were brought up with were passed down from my grandparents and great-aunts generation, plus we lived in suburban Lanarkshire (just outside Glasgow) where scontact with neighbours was simpler and easier, as I discovered after moving to a rural community in the Borders (Roxburghshire) when I was a raw lad of 16.