STEPHEN LEWIS braces himself for the ordeal that is Mischief Night.

IT MAY be asking a bit much, but try to imagine for a moment that by the weekend the rain has stopped. If there's a dry street or road left in North Yorkshire by then, we will all be facing a fresh ordeal.

Saturday night is Miggy Night: and while this once harmless tradition used to mean nothing more than a few children having a bit of harmless fun, in recent years it has developed into something rather more sinister.

It is a strange time of year. We have just passed through the witching hour that is Hallowe'en, relic of a medieval past when ghosts and spirits were thought to stalk the land on All Hallow's Eve.

We have even survived the horrible American import Trick Or Treat, described by North Yorkshire Police spokesman Tony Lidgate as "like when the stripper appears at your leaving do". ("Everybody is really embarrassed and hates it, but nobody likes to say so," he explained. "Trick Or Treat is a bit like that.")

Bonfire Night - if you can imagine a bonfire in the current soggy conditions - is just three days away, and already the bangs and flashes that go with it are beginning to scare the living daylights out of both us and our pets.

But Mischief Night is something different. It is, unlike Hallowe'en or Bonfire Night, a northern tradition. And it can turn nasty.

Mischief Night may originally have been associated with Hallowe'en itself. On Hallowe'en revellers would have donned masks and made weird noises as they attempted to frighten away everyone in sight, possibly as a way of warding off the ghosts and spirits that were supposed to be abroad. When the calendar was re-arranged for the umpteenth time in 1752, the theory goes, the fun and games somehow got transferred to November 4 instead.

But if it began as fun and games, Miggy Night has turned into something more: a chance to excuse all kinds of yobbishness, vandalism, drunkeness and thuggery with the excuse 'It's only Mischief Night'.

While in the past the mischief used to be confined to harmless children's pranks such as tapping on windows, smearing door-handles with treacle and taking gates off their hinges, today it's just as likely to be smashed windows, vandalised cars and drunken swearing and intimidation - if not worse.

"There is now a yob element," says Mr Lidgate. "There is a difference between mischief - a bit of a joke - and criminal damage.

"It is perhaps a bit of a lark to tie two door handles together. It is well beyond a lark to scrape a key down the side of a BMW."

Mr Lidgate tells the story of a North Yorkshire man who had two doors of his van superglued closed one Mischief Night.

"It may be quite a funny sight if you're watching him struggling to open his doors, I suppose, if that's what you think is funny.

"But he had to have one of those doors replaced, with a new lock, and he lost a day's work. There's really not much funny about that."

In the past, police used to issue heavy-handed warnings to potential mischief-makers, saying vandalism, drunkenness and intimidation would not be tolerated.

Now, they tend to adopt a softer approach: appealing for sense and consideration, rather than threatening the big stick.

"We're not saying stay in and do your crocheting in front of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire," says Mr Lidgate. "You can still have a life, but try to think about other people.

"Think what it's like for an elderly person living on their own. It's already a bit scary, with firework night coming up, and all the whistles and bangs.

"If they hear a noise outside, somebody smashing glass, it could be a bit frightening."

If mischief-makers fail to heed the appeals, though, the police are prepared to take harsher measures.

"If you're caught vandalising, breaking or spoiling something, it will cut no ice to say 'It's Mischief Night," Mr Lidgate says.

"Chucking a milk bottle through a window isn't a joke. We won't be laughing."