Every now and again you get a week where literally nothing happens - no really nothing. Which,to someone who only blogs once a week is a bit of a nightmare.
The only things that could conceivably be categorised as “having happened” are that I gained a cold and I managed to avoid all trick or treaters by either hiding and pretending not to be in or simulating having a vicious dog by encouraging George to bark. It did the trick.
Since when did all these Americanisms that now accompany Halloween become acceptable? When I was a kid we used to make lanterns out of turnips (I never even saw a real pumpkin until I was in my late teens!) dunk our heads in great big buckets of water for apples, eat our own body weight in treacle or have great big fancy dress parties.
At my first Halloween party, aged six, my parents dressed me as Darth Vader resplendent in Wellington boots, black cape, papier machier mask and a light saber fashioned out of the tube inside of a roll of tin foil. When I arrived, nobody could work out what I was supposed to be and my cardboard light sabre got wet and became flacid. The scar this left me with has never healed and to this day an invite to a fancy dress party is enough to make me feign illness or claim some prior engagement usually before they have told me the date for the event.
In the office on Friday, everybody (except me) turned up in “Comedy” Halloween fancy dress outfits. There were Ghouls, ghosts, Zombies and Witches, it really was hilarious for about 10 nanoseconds and then really tiresome. Driving home from work through a sea of equally comedic fancy dressers made me realise that the whole Halloween thing has really gathered pace over the last ten years or so.
The rise in popularity of trick or treating has been accompanied by a similar rise in anti-Halloween sentiment from the Christian Fraternity worried that it represents an increased interest in the occult. Our next door neighbours in Manchester are extremely religious and on Thursday they held some kind of ceremony where about 40 people came round to chant things and sing Christian folk songs. So in effect, our house became the “zone of neutrality” between the fancy dress wearing devil worshipers and the acoustic guitar strumming god botherers. All of this was accompanied by the annual onslaught of fireworks, (which starts in August, peaks in November and lasts until Christmas) which was enough to make me long for our rural idyll in the Limousin.
Mels parents are heading over in the next few weeks to get the house ready for Christmas. Our builder Warwick is starting work on the rendering of the barn next week and with just seven weeks to go until we arrive, our souls are pining for simple French life. I’m starting to mentally plan our trip to CarreFour in inordinate detail. Mel has warned me that I need to lose a stone before she’ll allow me to set foot in the door. Therefore I must live my life like a monk for the next few weeks and therefore nothing will happen again and my blogs will become like the musings of Cliff Richard.