Fright Night

October 31st rolls around (where is the time going?) and with it the usual crowd of sugar loaded kids on the prowl for candy. Fortunately, for me, my landlord provided a large bucket of the stuff outside the front door so i could sit in, door shut, and not have to worry about things. Y'see, it seems that Hallowe'en is quite a big thing over here. For a couple of weeks now, decorations have been popping up along my street ranging from the small - a pumpkin here and there, a Pumpkin sign on doors etc to the gradually more elaborate. A house at the end of the street had a large coffin covered in cobwebs complete with vampire inside. My landlord obviously got into it as well (he hahs a 7 year old son) and nearly gave me two heart attacks in the process - the first by lighting a pumpkin with a large glowing vampire face that i didn't see until i was coming back from the lab late one night, the second time when I was back after a night out and didn't see the fake spider hanging from the mailbox (i HATE spiders for those that don't know!).

I've never really been that much of a person for Hallowe'en. I can remember going to a couple of parties when i was younger and have been out to a couple of parties when a student (but never really got too elaborately dressed up). I did dress up last year - when i worked in a bar - but that's it. It was fun, too - i went as a vampire complete with red eyes and teeth. Managed to really scare some people on the bus too (i put the contact lens in at home before going to work so i could get used to them). It does feel rather strange, the amount of effort put into it over here - but then it does have one plus. The Christmas stuff gets ignored until November!