Every year I do a Halloween post. All about how much fun the kids have trick-or-treating in Dubai. Since this weekend has unofficially been dubbed Halloween weekend here, I’m publishing this post early – and, this year, it’s not about all the fun stuff laid on for the children.

It’s about Halloween at work, for fully grown adults.

So, this morning, I walk out the elevator and see bloody handprints on the linoleum. My eyes follow the scarlet trail to the door and, lo and behold, through the glass I see a body, lying inside the entrance foyer – a wild-haired killer clown (who I later find out is one of the editors) sprawled out on the floor. He’s twitching like a beheaded chicken.

Stony silence: Sales? Subscriptions?

I, myself, am clutching an axe, borrowed from Son2. Shoving my own hair into a ponytail, I don my mask and brandish my axe, the bones of my knuckles showing white.

I hear the sound of a knife-like instrument on glass.

Scrape, scrape.

(A little bit like fingernails on a blackboard).

Then a blood-curdling scream.

The door opens and the full candle-lit Halloween horror scene is revealed, complete with a knife-wielding intergalactic alien, cackling witches and a (rather sexy) pirate.

Another shriek.

Followed by laughter (heh-heh-heh).

This is clearly going to be no ordinary day at work.

In the kitchen, where I always go first to make tea, there’s a severed hand in the fridge – and though I know it’s not real, I push the fridge door shut firmly, smiling to myself that our workplace has become just like The Office TV show with Halloween gags and pranks.

A few minutes later, the procession of zombies and ghouls filtering into work is joined by a slightly tubby gravestone, who saunters around the office for, oooh, at least half an hour. No-one knows who he is (sales, perhaps?). He does a jolly good job sneaking up behind me, his hands enveloping my neck in a chilling grip as I’m caught unawares.

“But who on earth is he?” I say to my friend afterwards. “Is he going to walk round all day, d’you think?”

(After 30 minutes, it’s becoming quite amusing that he’s in no hurry at all to sit down and do any work.)

He comes back round with treats, and I take a shortbread dismembered finger – still none the wiser as to his identity.

The mystery was only solved later in the day, when we found out he’d been hired as entertainment – a tombstone-o-gram!

Who says the annual revelry is all about the kids?

Mwahahaha!