Linehands Declare Themselves Not Scared Of Ghosts Anymore After One Look At A Bedsheet With Pink Cheeks, Having Survived Worse Things Before Smoko

NIGHT SHIFT, ANYWHERE — "I'm not scared of ghosts any more. Come to daddy." That is now the official position of the concrete trade this Halloween, after a ghost in a white sheet with two hand-drawn eyeholes and a pair of pink cheeks turned up on a dark street with its arms out wide and not one linehand flinched.

The threat was assessed on the spot. Sleeves hanging like two empty cement bags, a hem swaying like a hose that has lost interest, and a face that looked like it was drawn by someone on the third beer of the arvo. It was rated below a blocked line.

"We've been scared by the boss ringing at quarter to five, a 'quick one' that turned into sixty cube, a plug at the top of a slab, and a mixer turning up forty minutes after we washed out," said one linehand. "A bedsheet is not on the list."

A Halloween historian who has never held a hose agreed that fear is a finite resource, and the trade spent its whole allowance on Mondays. "You can't haunt a man who has already been to a council inspection," he said.

The crew have invited the ghost to try again at a pour with no access and a hot load. The only thing still haunting the trade is an invoice nobody has paid since August.