Halloween.
But not just any old Halloween. In popular imagination, at least, it's the last Halloween of the Millennium.
If the tabloids are to be believed, in just two months, all the lights will go out, every computer in the world will crash, civilisation will fall, dogs and cats will lay down together, there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Some say the Antichrist is already here. They point to various people - Saddam Hussein, Ozzy Osbourne, William Jefferson Clinton, Bill Gates... all popular candidates.
The world is going to end.
Of course, not everybody believes that. There are people who know that exactly the same stuff went on at the end of the last Millennium. They know because they lived through it, and the world is still here. To the Kin of the Big Apple, this is just another year.
Or it was... but now some extraordinary events are about to shake that certitude. Maybe the world is coming to an end.
