Wispa is back. Oh how my heart is warmed.

(On a related note, I’m finding it hilarious that 80s fashions are back among the young. And they still don’t look good. Or if they do look good they look hilariously out of date to my tired thirty-something* eyes. My new neighbours are horribly fashionable, but he dresses just like a friend of mine did in my first year of uni. In 1990. Sheesh. I am doing that older person thing, aren’t I? Ooh, in my day…

*I was addicted to that show as well.)

It’s Halloween. I am ambivalent about it. Let me explain. When I was young my Grandparents owned a pub. It was a big white pub, with a restaurant attached, and the whole family pitched in. They were very good at owning a pub, and were always gadding about in posh frocks and tuxedos, going to ‘dinner dances’. For years I thought everyone’s Grandma had a whole room dedicated to sparkly dresses, hats and shoe mountains, just as I thought it was inevitable when I grew up that I too would be going to a lot of dinner dances.

I suppose there’s still time.

Anyway, one Halloween, when I was about 7, they gadded off, looking marvellous as always, and left my mum in charge of opening up for the evening – yes, back in the days when pubs shut in the afternoon! Until opening we watched TV in the flat upstairs. It was just the two of us, sharing a packet of chocolate cigarettes and watching the news. At about six pm the lights flickered in the living room. Once, twice. Then they did it again.

‘That’s funny,’ said my mum. ‘I’ll go and have a look.’

She left me thinking about ghosts (of course) and went to check downstairs. In a minute she was back.

‘The pub’s on fire,’ she said.

And then she called my aunty who lived up the road. This is my favourite bit of the story. I have never managed to work out why she didn’t call the fire brigade first – no one has. My aunty screamed (of course) and told her she would call them and that we should get out.

This is where it got scary.

There was only one staircase out of the flat. It was narrow and completely enclosed. At the bottom of the stairs there was a door straightahead, which led to a garage and then out. There was also a door on the left, which led to the kitchen. With the fire in it.

My mum pulled open the door at the top of the stairs. The lights had gone by now, and the stairway was completely dark. It was also filling up rapidly with thick black smoke.

‘Right,’ said my mum. ‘We’ve got to get out now.’
‘But I’ve got no shoes on,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t care if you didn’t have any clothes on, come on.’

So she picked me up, like I was really small again, and carried me down the stairs, ever so slowly in the horrible dark, through the smoke, past the door to the kitchen where, through the little window, I saw huge flames crawling up the walls, then we were out into the garage, and the street.

Outside was very surreal. Fire engines whizzed down the street, surrounded the pub and began to fight the fire. My aunt turned up. She’d called my Grandparents and soon they were back, telling my mum it was okay, while she cried and said she was sorry. The whole street turned up to watch their local going up in flames. There were people everywhere, and in the middle of it there was my Grandad in a tux, my Grandma in a sequinned dress, my mum in her slippers and me with no shoes on. My mum carried me for hours that night.

Well, it’s what mums do isn’t it?

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