Scary and nostalgic

Happy Halloween,or Samhain :) Traditionally,this is about a little more than candy. Its about remembering where you came from,the ancestors that brought you here,and okay,maybe a little sweetening for all the heavy stuff! I use it as a chance to carve pumpkins,make and eat loadsa veggie soups n apple pies n candy,make costumes and blow the dust off some old family photos. Its also a night for faeries,tricksters and the like,but Im not sure any self respecting faerie is gonna want much ta do with someone who habitually looks and dresses like a guy and has fairly little in the way of pixie dust around the house. I prefer to just concentrate on dusting off Dad n Grandpa,Garfield,Cleo and a few others who left along the way and just lighting the odd candle and asking that they please help me not to screw up life any more than necessary. Other than that,they have their gig,and I have mine,and as we're a few realms apart,Im not looking for them to pop up outa nowhere and start changing the world. Just a little hello is fine. As for the scary factor,Im sat typing this with my hair loose and big,and a notable lack of makeup-trust me,the trick or treaters get more scared than me!Have fun everyone.

duvet and love

Today I got up at 9,made cranberry chocolate wholemeal pancakes for breakfast and then went back to bed.My daughter was dressed and happily making crafty bits n bobs,and I got back under the warm covers and warm boyfriend,and stayed there until 12 when I got up to make lunch and get ready to go out.The avo was spent with 10 year old in hobbycraft heaven. Today is the kind of day I will think of when I need to get through another cold wet morning at 6.45...

sickness and candy

Yesterday we were woken at 6 am by the most horrific screaming I have ever heard.It made every hair on the back of my neck stand up and I never want to hear it again. There was so much pain in it I thought someone was dying outside our house.Then the shouting started. 'I am being tested' 'Im not mad' 'keep them away from me'. Turns out our reclusive neighbour (we have lived here a year and a half and Ive only seen him once,at 3am.) is either having a breakdown of some kind,or has maybe forgotten or not taken regular meds.We've always wondered a little about him,there is a horrible smelly gunk leaking from under his fence into our yard,the lights only ever go on at night,the house looks like its about to fall down and when he didnt show up for work without calling one day they sent the police round.We figured he was just eccentric,or maybe worked some random night job or just plain hated people.I never really gave him too much thought.Lets face it,who are you going to give more attention to,someone you never hear,or students who live on the other side and frequently hold 'band practice' at 11.30pm with the volume up so high it makes our wall vibrate?!(I found the best cure for that is to get me up,gimme a broom or something with a long handle and let me go bang on their upstairs window until they see me and get scared into turning it down.Im not unreasonable,but if you wake me when I have to be up at 6.45 or worse wake my 10 yr old then your sorry ass is in trouble.Plus at that time of night Im pretty confident anyone who turfs me outa bed is in for a shock.My hair will be bigger than my head,my eyes will be squinting behind glasses and I will look like Godzillas mom on crack-nice picture huh?!Pity my boyfriend! ) Anyhow,I digress. Our otherwise quiet neighbour was standing in the middle of the street,screaming and howling in between garbled assertions that he was not mad and he was being tested.His neighbours on the other side who know him a little better ran out and tried to calm him and call an ambulance.I think the worst thing was listening to that horrible agonised scream and being totally helpless.Your first instinct is to help,but rationally,there are already 2 people out there,and adding one more,total stranger,is probably not going to help.He will probably start feeling like a sideshow,or worse it will ratchett his paranoia up a notch and he will start thinking we mean to hurt him. Ive never felt so powerless,and it was horrible. Eventually the ambulance turned up and they must have injected him with a sedative because it all went suddenly quiet.His voice must have been gone,throat shredded.The police came back later to try and find any family contact details and any prescription meds.I guess hes in psych lockdown right now.Its probably gonna take about a week or so to stabilise him.I just feel so sorry for the guy,I cant imagine what it must be like to be so terrified in your own head.
Onto the rest of the day,and a trip to Cybercandy was on the cards :) For those who dont know,this is an amazing sweet shop where they stock everything from japanese candy (pocky and hello kitty EVERYTHING) to voodoo rocky roads,cherry bars and...TIM TAMS!!! This will mean very little to anyone with no ausie connections,but to me this is heaven in biscuit form.And NO timtams are NOT just aussie penguin biscuits!!!Thats like saying Bugs is a scratcher,or Da Vinci had the odd good idea!!! Tim Tams are choccy perfection. Needless to say I went nuts and got 2 packs of creme caramel among the stuuuupid amounts of plastic 'hello kitty' crapola I seem to have been railroaded into purchasing (thank you 10 year old on half term,remind me again why I dont normally take you shopping?!) Ah well. The ten minute glory of CyberCandy did come with a heavy price tag however-4 HOURS of travel there and back,including two nightmarish hours getting so stupidly lost I eventually cracked and dragged us to covent garden where I could at least get a bloody map and a clue.That and much dark muttering when we were forced to go home via waterloo and stop at places that I know no soul EVER gets on or off at,and we were pretty worn out by the time we made it in...slept well though :)

well well,Im a blogger

...yes I did say 'blogger' not anything else...Im gonna look around here awhile...bear with me