Jane Lovering: More cough than goth as Halloween beckons

Take my face, for a start. Go on, have a look at it. That’s not the face of a consumptive Victorian Miss, is it? I look more like a sunset with teeth. Far too round and robust to ever carry off the pale and interesting look. The only clue that I might be consumptive would be my hacking cough, and it’s very hard to cough in a corset, let me tell you.

It’s pretty hard to do anything really when you’ve been strapped into a corset. If I drop something and need to pick it up then I nearly suffocate myself with my own chest, and sitting down requires me to adopt a posture which suggests to onlookers that I have been the subject of a hit-and-run taxidermy experiment.

Nevertheless, despite my blatant unsuitability for the role, Halloween will see me again strapped into more whalebone than Moby Dick, floating around the streets in my vampire costume and scaring small rodents and the local dogs.

Alas, I have found that there is not much that one can wear over the top of a corset, when one may need an emergency release in the event of, say, needing to go to the loo or sudden movement. And the nights are decidedly chilly at the end of October, so I’m opting for a cardigan. One with pockets, because the storage opportunities afforded by black lace skirts and restrictive underwear are very limited, and I will need a handkerchief.

And you can forget my wearing those high-heeled boots that seem to be de rigueur among the vampire crowd, because if I fall over in that costume I’d be lying there on the street like an overturned ewe, until someone unlaced me sufficiently to roll over. So I’m sticking to sensible shoes and thermal long-johns.

I’m going to look like a cross between a femme fatale and Norah Batty. Which is what I’m going for, really, I’m too easily frightened to want to look really scary, I still hide behind the sofa when Doctor Who is on. We’ve had to shove it quite a way from the wall, to make room.

So, if you see me wandering the streets; dressed like something out of “Last of the 1880 Summer Wine”, trying to peer out over my robustly-hoisted bosom, and creaking like a windy day in a cane furniture warehouse, attempting to look pale and interesting whilst being pink and toothy and coughing into a pocket full of tissues... just press a bag of sherbet lemons into my hand and say “Trick or Treat”.

And try not to laugh.

Jane Lovering is an award-winning romantic comedy writer published by Choc Lit.