It was right after Halloween. I was half-watching a TV show, when I heard someone announce that Halloween marks the beginning of the Eating Season.

This happens twice every year, and twice every year I rail against it. But the Time Cops keep winning. I’m speaking, of course, of the upcoming time change.

This is my last column before Halloween, and I suppose I do have a bit of good news: Seems my bum knee is coming around sufficiently to allow me to hand out candy on the big night.

With Halloween around the corner, I decided to talk about something that is creepier than a lot of folks seem to think. I call them the four types of prophecy.

We shot the flu the other day. Hope it works.

Alas, it was an innocent mid-week trip to the store to pick up some things. And the visit had started off well. I had swung by a particular part of the store and had gotten a good “bah, humbug” fix, snorting at all the Christmas stuff that was already up. Ah, yes, that was the ticket.

“How I wish the ‘infernal combustion’ engine had never been invented.” — J.R.R. Tolkien.

“What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer…..” Ebenezer Scrooge.

I will now relate a touching tale, of a man and his recliner.

Today, it’s a little of this, a little of that: