Halloween has come and gone, and Bonfire Night is imminent. I will never entirely understand our fascination with blowing things up in the sky and gleefully pointing at all the colours. When all the smoke and fire has cleared, you’re left standing around in the cold, wondering how it was worth the money and bother. And if you’ve got dogs, it’s a nightmare; every November 31st it’s like the apocalypse has come, as far as our canine friends are concerned. Every explosion, every bang, presages imminent doom. Babies, as it happens, aren’t too thrilled with it either.

And why must we yearly celebrate the capture and torturous murder of that Guy Faux fella, when all he was trying to do was blow up a corrupt Parliament? Um, I think I’d better leave it there…

Halloween, on the other hand, I’ve warmed to belatedly. For all the cynical scoffing at our inheriting of an American commercial tradition, this passed Halloween night was actually alright, round my neck of the woods. There were no feral teenagers pelting doors with eggs or smashing up cars wearing Scream masks. But there were a handful of really sweet children, aged between about four and ten, knocking on doors and indulging in trick-or-treating of the less monstrous variety. It actually felt like an echo of a more innocent day, if there is any such thing; a brief window of innocuous and good-spirited festivity for the benefit of children, in defiance of all the ill signs of the times. Parents allowing their children to trick-or-treat their neighbourhoods, unconcerned that every other resident might be a paedophile or terrorist waiting to snatch their sweet-seeking visitors; and kids, in the meantime, perfectly able to do their business all polite and courteous, without resorting toswearing, threats or egg-pelting.

Or maybe it was just our neighbourhood; maybe these specific children in this specific area have just been well-raised and taught politeness and courtesy. Maybe everywhere else the car-alarms were going off, windows were being smashed, and the dark side was in full dominion.

But it made me think how ill a society must be in which community spirit is non-existent and the innocent observance of inoffensive traditions is almost entirely being consigned to the past; and in which children are generally considered to be unsafe, their freedoms thus curtailed more and more.

It’s just a shame that we forgot what night it was, and therefore were sorely lacking in the sweets department. The five year-old girl in the witch costume was NOT overly impressed with the custard-creams and Wotsits, it has to be said.

And, while we’re on the subject, we should bring back Christmas carolling too.

Sticking with Messianic-based commercialism, I can report that the Michael Jackson movie, ‘This Is It’, is not the purely cynical cash-in that I thought it was going to be. The film is actually a compelling experience on several fronts, sometimes moving. What’ll really strike you is how good Michael Jackson’s vocals still were at this point; his voice hadn’t diminished or weakened at all. Watching him reviving songs like the thirty-year-old ‘Human Nature’, the nineties-era ‘Jam’, orthe forty-year-old Jackson Five classic ‘I Want You Back’, he sounded just like he did ten, twenty, thirty years ago. It’s also fascinating to see the preparation that was going into his London performances, the sheer scale of it, and all the new ideas and concepts that were being incorporated (new footage to ‘Thriller’ and even new words for the Vincent Price bit, new film footage for ‘Earth Song’, and new black-and-white movie montages for ‘Smooth Criminal’, including Michael Jackson being put into the classic Rita Hayworth glove-strip sequence from ‘Gilda’).

A testament to what might’ve been, and was going to be. And to a creative genius who thoroughly deserves the accolade of being the greatest performer of all time; there certainly have been better musicians, better songwriters, and even better singers, than Jackson over the years, but there is no one who could outperform him or put on a better show. And no, he doesn’t look weak or unwell at any point during these recordings.

What also came across very strongly in the footage was the deconstruction of decades of media villainisation and mythmaking and the previously unexposed reality of Michael Jackson as a well-meaning, gentle-spirited individual, shy and maybe sometimes a bit awkward, but appreciative of his crew and colleagues and entirely courteous in his behaviour (I lose count of how many times he says “God bless you” to people). And also of the consummate proffesional, with a clear vision for every element of his show. Poignantly, he also comes across as being genuinely excited about his comeback, about performing on stage again and getting back to his real platform as an entertainer and performer, not his over-publicised life as some weird millionaire recluse or celebrity frankenstein. This enthusiasm becomes child-like at times, but is never anything less than endearing, particularly watching him return to old favourites like ‘Wanna Be Starting Something’ and ‘Man In the Mirror’.

Whether future posthomous releases of whatever kind are on the horizon or not, this particular collection of footage acts as a fitting tribute to a performance master, and a bittersweet document of his last days.

That renowned spirit medium, Derek Akora, meanwhile, is imminently to try to make contact with the spirit of MJ in the afterlife. Frankly, one wonders why it’s been left for so long; some medium or another has usually made contact with the departed celebrity within mere  weeks of their demise (as I recall, just a few months ago, Jade Goody was channelled by some obscure medium within about a fortnight of her passing away). Here’s to hoping that Michael Jackson will inform Mr Akora that he has embarked on a whirlwind love affair with Anna Nicole Smith, jammed with Louis Armstrong on heavenly marijuana, and been to dinner with Gandhi, Jesus, Malcolm-X, and Cicero…

All evidence suggests that Afghanistan right now could use a Gandhi of its own (or a Jesus or Cicero, for that matter). It really didn’t come as that much of a surprise that the Afghan elections were riddled with corruption and illegitmacy. As has been said in these pages months ago; the functioning of democracy in Afghanistan is, in some ways, at present, an almost empty vase, in a country where women are broadly still treated like third-class citizens; where, in fact, an actual law has been passed allowing men to ’starve their wives’ if they refuse to have sex. Where a reputed eight out of ten women still suffer regular violence, and where eighty percent of women are illiterate, having been long excluded from educational opportunities. A country that is still being undermined by the Taliban, and which still has – even outside of the Taliban – tribal, sexist, and unmodern attitudes.

Invading Afghanistan wasn’t a solution to anything; merely a starting point – at best. At worst, an endless and costly exercise in futility, though optimism would be the most honourable course now. But Afghanistan, even more so than Iraq (which was at least a fairly modernised country before 2003), is going to take a long time to evolve beyond its old-world culture. Whether that means foreign troops should be there for a long time too is another matter, but such deep-rooted and long-lasting attitudes and dynamics can’t be neutralised by military activity, nor even by democracy, as lately evidenced. What’s needed is an evolution of its lesser cultural follies; and that can only happen organically, and will, in all likelihood, take at least a generation.

A viscious, evil attack on a woman this week has been widely reported. Attacks, of course, happen all the time in our cities, because we live side-by-side with a sub-culture of diminished intelligence and fast-degrading morality, which is percolating particularly among the presently adoloscent generation. But this woman, in particular, was demonstrably singled out for being dressed a certain way or having a certain look – she was a Goth; and there was nothing incidental or random about it. There was anoter attack of a similar nature about a year ago, against a younger woman who was also a Goth, and this too got quite a lot of attention in the newspapers, if only for a day or two (people stop caring very quickly).

The question of what it is exactly about Goths that make them a target yields a fairly quick and easy answer; they look and dress different to the norm (the norm being rotweiler-faced yobs or chavs, presumably), they are self-expressionists and non-conformists, and they follow a minority, non-mainstream culture. That’s all the reason that feral, base, street-prowlers from the lower end of the gene pool need to attack someone in the nastiest manner. It’s quite simply a transference of the most basic bullying principle from the playground to the streets – single out and torment the weirdo, or the different-looking one, or the fatty or the school’s sole Asian kid or Jew, etc.

We can, as a society, cite all kinds of (entirely valid) marks of our modern enlightenment, and of the progress of our cultures over the passed fifty years or so; but there are still infectious underclasses of minority-hating brutes populating our cities and societies. People who instinctively see The Other as someone to be hated, feared, taunted, degraded, humiliated, and even assaulted. And that Other can be practically anyone; a Goth, an immigrant, a gay man, a Muslim woman with her face covered, or just someone wearing the wrong hat.

Personally, I’d much rather populate my world with Goths and as many other counter-culturalists as I could find than with chavs, thugs or morons…