Dalston Eastern Curve Garden hosts 8th annual Pumpkin Lantern show

Just how hip is your pumpkin?
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Halloween is for the dexterous. The best among us carve out names in jack-o’-lantern folklore, or at least take a stab at rudimentary cosmetic surgery.

Thanks to social media the whole world is now your neighbour. There are nearly nine million search results for “#pumpkin” on Instagram, and competition is fierce.

In Dalston’s Eastern Curve Garden, the Pumpkin Lantern Festival has lit up the night with hundreds of orange orbs for the past week, reaching a finale tonight. There’s no limit to creativity with carved pump-cats, St Paul’s Cathedral and Cinderella with a garlic clove slipper. London is potty for pumpkins.

If you are overwhelmed or too overworked to carve your own, help is at hand. Pumpkin stencils are available and range from basic witches to immaculate renderings of Pennywise from the blockbuster film IT. These aren’t true jack-o’-lanterns, since the surface is etched rather than cut out entirely, but the faces still glow with the help of a candle.

Even Nasa is on the case. Tips from the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California might give your gourd a lift. On Nasa’s website this year, engineers’ homemade set-pieces use LEDs, fibreoptic lighting, motors, pumps and programmable microcontrollers. Also embracing technology is Marks & Spencer. The supermarket’s £4 pumpkins have spooky stencils pre-printed by laser onto their surface.

In the US, Americans are once again trying to make Halloween great again with the “Trumpkin”, a pumpkin carved in the likeness of the President. Never known to miss an opportunity, the Trump team has hit back by selling a Halloween pumpkin hat. The latest “Make America Great Again” attempt has the campaign promise emblazoned on it, and is yours for $45.

Blue pumpkins are also in. In a valiant effort to create a kinder, more tolerant Halloween, The Teal Pumpkin Project is run by Food Allergy Research and Education in America, but now it has made its way over to the UK. A teal pumpkin is a sign that a house will offer treats that are suitable for any trick-or-treaters with food allergies or intolerances.

Sir Patrick Stewart, too, is embracing diversity in the pumpkin patch. The Star Trek actor has boldly grown where few men have gone before, posting a happy snap with a smorgasbord of wonky gourds on Monday, thereby doing his bit for food waste (we think). This is objectively more endearing than Kourtney Kardashian picking up pumpkins in an orange minidress this week.

If you’re still looking to hone your handiwork, today, ZSL London Zoo is inviting visitors to pick their own pumpkin at the enclosure’s patch, then hosting carving masterclasses between 11am and 3.30pm. The future, at least for the next 48 hours, is bright, orange, and tastes of pumpkin mash.

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