The Galoshans Arts Festival gets under way on Friday in Greenock, and next night loads of weans will be out in the streets in various guises for Halloween.

A Tele reader in America, where Halloween is big business, contacted me after I commented a few weeks ago that it should be ‘galoshans forever’ here rather than using the Stateside ‘trick or treat’ term.

Barry McKeag, who worked as a compositor at the Tele in the 1940s and 50s before heading across the Atlantic, told me he had a chuckle about my observation.

He said: “I got the point okay, but when we went out as guisers in Greenock when we were kids, we had to DO something to earn a treat — sing, tap dance, stand on our hands . . . something!” Barry, who now lives in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, after a spell in Canada, added: “If you think ‘trick or treat’ is bad, when I first moved from Greenock to Toronto it was called ‘shell out’.

“In Greenock parlance that would be ‘gimme yer stuff’, which has ‘trick or treat’ beaten by a country mile!” Yes, somehow I don’t think shouting ‘gimmie yer stuff’ at an Inverclyde door would be met with an outpouring of bonhomie and largesse.

Inverclyde’s proud role as one of Scotland’s Halloween hotspots is being highlighted admirably by this weekend’s festival.

Hopefully it gives our economy a boost — as well as generating lots of frighteningly fiendish fun!