We’re on the cusp of Hallowe’en, the bizarre celebration of ghouls, monsters, skeletons and ghosts. Mostly the event is for kids who go door to door filling their bags with candies and sugar treats while their parents attend costume parties and dress up in weird and funny ways. 

‘Any chance Camp that you’re out to the Legion dance this Halloween? Maybe dressed as a book seller?’

‘Not a snowball’s chance in hell,’ Camp retorted. It’s enough that I have to stock books about grisly murders, Walpurgis night witches’ dances and Day of the Dead but I refuse to decorate my store with spider webs and skulls. ‘

While Hallowe’en celebrates fantasy horror and zombies, ‘the real horror show is playing out in today’s elections: from B.C. where the two parties are deadlocked to the nasty campaign of Trump and his cultish followers against common sense, decency and democracy.’ 

Camp shook his grey curls. ‘It is hard to fathom that Trump might be president again, despite his lousy record the first time. He oversaw the 3^rd biggest debt increase of any president; he mismanaged the pandemic; he courted dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un and when he lost the next election to Biden, he denied that he lost and then attempted to overthrow the government and prevent the certification of the vote. I know I’m ranting here but hell, he is the real ghoul that is haunting my dreams.’

‘What do you think about Cuba and their failing infra structure?’

‘It is sad for the Cuban people and a testament to how inefficient their state run economy is. There is no incentive for anybody to work if there is no reward. Who wants to toil in the fields if all the produce and fruit of their labour goes to the central government? And Cuban cigars aren’t as popular as they once were.’

‘We were in Cuba twice, once in 2004, twenty years ago, when people still had enough to eat and there was some progress in opening up private businesses. We also spent 2019 New Year’s Eve in Havana and loved it. We took vintage taxis everywhere with drivers that were doctors and engineers but made better money driving cabs but all of that is pretty well gone now. Mind you, the pandemic didn’t help and isolated Cuba even more. The latest collapse of their electrical system is no surprise to many as tragic as it is. I do feel sorry for the Cubans who have neither rights, food nor power.’

‘Under the new president Miguel Diaz Canel, who was groomed for decades by the Castro Brothers, the state run economy has further eroded. High inflation, high food and fuel prices and lousy or no incomes. 

He regrets, for example, that the celebrations for the Day of Culture will have to be cancelled due to the poweroutage. ‘But that is not a problem’ he said, after all, you have ‘homeland, revolution and socialism’ The only thingmissing is electricity, one might add. Also, since 2021 over a million Cubans, mostly women, have left the Caribbean country which is three times the size of Vancouver Island.’

‘So, when you want to think about ghouls or monsters, you don’t have far to look and the real horror shows are playing out every day on the telly, in the news and on social media.’

‘Ready for another round?’ Vicky, sporting an Octoberfest dirndl outfit, asked.

‘Did we ever say no?’ Camp said. ‘You’re into this Hallowe’en stuff I see.’

‘Anything to lighten up the dreary days,’ she said ‘and it doesn’t all have to be ghosts and goblins. By the way that was a trick question.’

‘Trick or treat? Just two beers please.’