Last night some residents of Alexandria were startled by a procession of odd little figures prowling through the dark. Among them was a pharaoh, a ninja, two princesses, a vampire, a skeleton, a witch and a knife-head-wound-victim.

Egypt doesn't celebrate Halloween so the half-dozen ex-pat kids who went trick or treating in Kafr Abdou last night were basically celebrities. They were met by waves, exclamations and compliments. The pharaoh was even stopped for a photo. Our strange parade provided great entertainment for the Alexandrians we passed in restaurants and cafes.

When we met up for our trick-or-treating excursion I thought the Brits were so cute with their tiny paper loot bags, having never experienced real trick-or-treating before and being unaware of the standard hit-as-many-houses-as-possible-and-fill-two-pillowcases technique. In reality we only hit about eight apartments (including mine). Some of the trick-or-treating venues went all out with decorations and surprises. The house of witches was particularly terrifying (for me, not so much for Oscar). At one point I accidentally stepped on a dismembered hand. Heaven knows what the Egyptians were thinking!

Richard’s gag was pretending to give the kids grapes instead of candy but it backfired when a bunch of kids (and adults) took him up on it. After the candy was distributed, he ended up giving cups of water to a bunch of thirsty kids which may be one of the strangest halloween treats I’ve ever seen but trick-or-treating in the heat is thirsty business.

Oscar came home pleased as punch with his goodies, and, as tradition dictates, passed out into a sugar coma.