For a short two week period I am working for commercial radio, filling in for Dave Gorman on his Sunday morning show on Absolute - tune in at 10am for the next two Sundays, because I don't have quite enough to do at the moment. Unlike on the 6Music show (which you can tune into on Saturday at 10am) we don't just turn up at 9 and go for a coffee and think about what we might talk about, there is a mid-week meeting, over dinner (paid for by the radio station) where the team chew over some ideas and, on this occasion some curry and garlic nan bread. Good to see how the other half live, before returning to my humdrum life, drinking coffee with Andrew Collings.
But halfway through the meal something a bit odd happened, when a group of kids, who were between about 8 and 10 years old, came into the central London restaurant and went from table to table. Even more oddly they all had slightly crap masks draped over their faces, looking for all the world like that woman from the 7/7 bombings. In fact when the first one arrived at our table I genuinely thought he or she might have been a burns victim. But then he or she mumbled "Trick or Treat". This flimsy rubber mask, without even a string to hold it on, was a Halloween costume and these six or seven children were attempting to get money. From people eating in a restaurant. Which would have been an odd place to go trick or treating if this was America and it was Halloween. But given that it is England and the 6th October made it even odder.
You can't go trick or treating in a restaurant. In England. On the 6th October. None of those things are right. The stupid children pricks. And if you do do that, which you mustn't, then there shouldn't be six or seven of you. After saying no to the first child, another smaller one, with a similarly 7/7 type mask came and asked us again. As if all we needed was to be asked twice and then we'd give money to a child we didn't know, in a restaurant. In England. On the 6th October.
We didn't give them anything. And nor, I think it's safe to say, did any of the other diners. I can't quite understand why the staff let these kids come into the restaurant at all. It was all most strange.
A similar thing happened a couple of days ago at lunch at Pret a Manger in central London, when two young lads came in with sheets of paper asking the diners if they would sponsor them. Presumably the idea was that we would sponsor them by giving them the money there and then, with no real proof that they were going to be giving it to the charity they claimed to be collecting for. In my day, if you were doing a sponsored walk as a kid, you might go round to neighbours and people you knew, get a sponsorship and then go to collect it from them when you had done the task. You didn't approach strangers in cafes and just ask for money. I, like everyone else in Pret a Manger smelt a rat and didn't give them any money. I don't know if these genii made anything out of their scheme, or if the unseasonal, geographically challenged Trick or Treaters convinced anyone to donate. But this all seems odds. Essentially these are just tiny beggars, hiding behind the veneer of some supposed British traditions, with no real understanding of how they work. Are they more successful than honest beggars? Or does the embarrassment of targeting people as they eat have some effect? Hijacked and bamboozled by the unexpected request. But I can't understand why the staff of either establishment allowed it to happen.
I am also not sure that a victim of 7/7 is a suitable Halloween costume anyway.
Very strange.
