Every year it's the same question: "Daddy, are fireworks illegal?" Daddy, who has a long and happy association with fireworks, hums, haws, hedges and eventually agrees that, although in the legal sense they are, something might be done about fireworks.
"And will there be a bonfire?" Again, equivocation, mutterings about accidents, insurance, neighbours but no outright denial. Year in, year out, the kids know, it's touch and go.
Will the consenting adults get it together to dig out the clods of earth in the park and erect a professionally constructed bonfire? Or will conscience make cowards of us all?
This is not something only the kids want. This is like when they say "Drive faster, Daddy" and Daddy, who would love to drive faster, has to resist.
The kids have learned that the best ploy is to assume that everything is in the bag, fixed, settled, end of story. As the days close in they start to talk - it's not whether there will be a bonfire, but where it will be . . . same as last year or further from the big tree. Like apprentice anarchists they huddle together, debating the relative merits of bangers, rockets and starbursts. The air crackles with excitement and it's generally agreed that the best high explosives come via Amsterdam. Or maybe not.
"Dad, where are we getting our fireworks? What about your friend in Bangkok?" says Andrew.
"Mum, you know that old door you've been keeping in the garden, can we put that on the bonfire?" begs John.
Then ugly rumours begin to circulate about meany neighbours who are said to object to bonfires and fireworks. Football matches are halted in mid-slaughter to digest reports of adult opposition.
But soon there are signs of real grown-up commitment. Deadwood from gardens begins to pile up near the bonfire site. Boxes, chipboard cupboards, a broken armchair for the guy - the community begins to draw together, literally. Old carpets are dragged out into the park, a mattress is thrown in and suddenly there' s an impromptu gym where the kids practice flips and fung fu moves and wrestling.
The bonfire movement becomes competitive. "Hey Dad, Daniel's mum has put out a whole wardrobe for the bonfire. We could get rid of the garden shed!"
The hardcore anti-bonfirenzi are appalled. The park is looking like the city dump. Rats will be attracted and, worse, undesirable youths. But it's too late. The movement has its own momentum now and the kids are on a roll. Nobody is going to take the stuff back out of the park. Anything that isn't on the home insurance list is being looked at by the dads.
Anything that hasn't been worn in the past two months is being scrutinised by the mums.
Those with a hoarding instinct are in crisis, backs to the wall. "It will come in useful some day" I yelp, trying to retrieve the crate Mr Delahunt's 150 fire logs came in.
"Face it, Mum" says Andrew. "You're never going to make anything out of that crate. You've still got most of the logs, even. And you said you'd take me to the market to buy bangers."
"When did I say that?" I croak. "Me buy bangers? Never. That's Dad's job."
An hour later, we're making our clandestine way around the market, four 10-year-old boys and one middle-aged gangster's moll. We glance furtively at the stall owners, trying to figure who is pretending not to have a major haul of fireworks. Our most streetwise kid approaches the woman in the beanbag stall. "Any bangers, missus?" he asks loudly. She shakes her head.
"For God's sake," I hiss, "keep it down and don't ask anyone who doesn't look like Gabriel Byrne." "Who's Gabriel Byrne?" says Andrew. He strolls up to a stall displaying silver jewellery and mutters to the girl "Any bangers in the market?"
Suddenly out of nowhere, the Artful Dodger appears at Andrew's elbow. He looks about eight, bony in his shiny black tracksuit, features at once relaxed and watchful. "Youse are lookin for fireworks," he suggests. We nod. "C'mon."
"It's life, mum" John whispers, quoting Star Trek, "but not as we know it".
The boys fall into step as though they do this every day. I follow shiftily at a little distance, a caption above my head declaring: "This woman is about to buy illegal fireworks with the potential to maim or blind her own two sons."
The Artful Dodger leads us first to a caff where his father hardly breaks his conversation to hand over a bulky set of keys. We then proceed out of the market and along a narrow lane.
AS we make our way around skips and lost supermarket trolleys, the boy lectures his followers on the provenance and merits of his fireworks, remarks that he is all sold out of bangers, will be getting more in before the weekend, hasn't much left now really, could sell everything six times over, but they might as well have a look.
We arrive in the car park of a large insurance company, a nice touch I think, and the boy opens the boot of an anonymous car. Black plastic sacks contain a small range of explosives - the variety pack is £20, the rockets are £10 for 5 and the starbursts are a real bargain at £4 for 5. As forewarned, no bangers.
I am deeply nervous, expecting squad cars to crash land around us at any moment. Previous worries about being ripped off are as nothing. Life, I see now, has only one purpose - to complete the deal and get away.
The Artful Dodger is in no hurry. He explains in detail what can be expected from each rocket with much showy waving about of the item in question and full instructions as to safety procedures. My junior partners are not impressed. They stand around the boot, as impassive as a group of Japanese importers. They want bangers.
Our lead kid mentions that he already has a variety pack left over from last year. "Don't use those," says the Dodger. "Blow your hand away. They dry out and get hard. I'm just tellin youse for yer own sake." He's in a take-it-or-leave-it mood. It's a seller's market.
We are joined from behind by two heavy-set, well-tonsured youths. Are these the sales-kid's heavies or plain clothes fuzz? They look about 17 but then all policemen look about 17 to me. "Do you know anywhere else we can get bangers?" asks Andrew as I scream inwardly at him to be quiet because anything he says will be used in evidence against us. "Come back here before ten next Saturday an' I might still have some," says the boy, turning to his next customers.
As we walk away, my boys insist on denouncing the merchandise in loud derisive voices. But like Arnie Schwartzenegger, they'll be back.
My brush with criminality keeps me awake until two. I think about Hallowe'en's rituals over the years. Dressing the kids up for trick or treat, walking with the little ones from house to house, standing in the dark with them watching the soaring sparks. How different from my childhood. Growing up on a farm, Hallowe'en was a makey-uppy thing we first heard about in school. The town kids apparently ducked their heads in basins of water to bite apples. They ran around with sheets over their heads pretending to be ghosts. And, according to our Irish readers, bhi athas an domhain orthu, when they found the ring in the bairin breac. We related to the bairin breac because it was bought in a shop, not home-made, and therefore a luxury.
The town kid's talk of pennies for guys sounded foreign and exotic. From rural innocence to mafiosi meetings and hard-knuckled bargaining for bangers, in one generation. All changed, changed utterly.
Yet for our kids, Hallowe'en is a natural part of the seasonal ebb and flow of their lives - as inevitable as the full moon rising over the sea and sailing in behind the trees.