LET'S HAVE A HALLOWEEN CATCH-UP! BY SANDRA HARRIS.
LET’S HAVE A HALLOWEEN CATCH-UP!
BY SANDRA
HARRIS. ©
It seems like ages since I wrote anything personal so I
thought a dreary Monday afternoon in the run-up to Halloween might be a good
time for a chat. Speaking of Halloween, I’ve officially decided that it’s my
favourite festival of the year, even more so than Christmas.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas and I’ve had some
magical festive seasons, but I’m fed up with the terrible commercialisation of
Christmas. The pressure to spend money on certain things is ridiculous. In previous
years, I’ve given in to it like a turkey to the slaughter, but no more!
No more tubs of feckin’ Celebrations, Cadbury’s Roses,
Miniature Heroes and Quality Street that will be still sitting there in the
cupboard in March. No more chocolate-covered toffees, sexy-delicious as they are,
and no more of the boxes of jellies, fudge or liquorice sweets with the smiling
Santa on the box, because, you know, our teeth, lol.
No more stupid boxes of stupid crackers; they’re filled with
shite that’s broken before you can unfurl the bad joke and the paper hat. No buying
more than one Christmas cake just because I love the little festive scenes depicted
in the icing. I’m the only person in my house who eats Christmas cake, so why
do we need seven of the things…?
My kids and I are agreed also that, this Christmas, we’ll be
down-sizing on the presents side of things as well, because we always buy each
other too much. Which is lovely, but we’re running out of places to put things.
So, this year, only one or two small presents for everyone. Besides, my kids
are both adults now, so why was I queuing outside Dublin’s biggest toy-shop
last December on a Sunday morning waiting for it to open…? Because
someone wanted Pokemon plushies, that’s why…
Halloween is simpler, at least in my family. We dig out the
little spooky ornaments we’ve bought over the years and put them around the
place. We buy a little pumpkin but we don’t usually mutilate it because we is well
soft-hearted, innit.
Buy a few nuts and apples and a barm brack with a ring in it
for consumption on the night and bob’s your apple. I mean, Uncle. As I’m the
only person in the house who eats the barm brack (a sort of cake-bread with
currants and raisins in it which you slice and butter), I’m pretty much
guaranteed to get the ring and be a bride before the year is out. Woo-hoo! Better
get my trousseau in order. Now wherever did I put those petticoats…?
During the month of October, we read or re-read spooky books-
I love a good ghost story or haunted house tale- and we watch or re-watch
horror films, normally ones we’ve loved for years like NIGHT OF THE LIVING
DEAD, CARRY ON SCREAMING, THE FOG or THE SHINING.
Then the kids tease me about how the ghostly mariners from THE
FOG are gonna come and bang on my bedroom door four times so I end up
sleeping sitting up with all the lights on and the wardrobe pushed in front of said
door. It makes running to the loo very problematic but what can you do…?
I do believe we’re streaming Disney Plus this autumn so we’ll
be able to binge-watch the TREEHOUSE OF HORROR episodes of THE
SIMPSONS, a definite Halloween staple in our house. Also, there are lots of
delightfully spooky places to visit in Dublin like Marsh’s Library, Dublin’s
oldest library and one in which Bram Stoker did some of the research for his
magnum opus, DRACULA, and the Mummies of Saint Michan’s Church down on
the quays, so we’d normally make at least one grisly expedition like that in
October.
What am I currently doing, writing-wise? Well, I’ve almost
finished penning two-hundred-plus pages of a personal memoir about a time in my
life that I feel might be of interest to other people. I won’t be rushing
straight into self-publishing it or looking for a traditional publisher for it immediately.
This one I’m going to leave sit for a while, a few months or maybe longer. The
relief of finally having written it at long last, after saying I was going to
write it for years, is the main thing for me. What happens to it later, well,
we’ll see.
The old gas cooker that served me faithfully for twenty-three
years is finally winding down. So, we have to buy a new cooker, which looks
like it’s going to cost the earth, but not only that. There’s a whole big process
that has to take place around it.
The old one has to be taken out by a Registered Gas Installer
(not just Daniel O’Donnell popping round to Sr. Assumpta’s for tea and
cakes!) and hauled away for scrap or whatever they do to old cookers. Then,
the new one has to be carefully connected, preferably by the same Registered
Gas Installer, and then and only then are you cooking with gas, lol. It’s going
to be a major pain in the tits, but better now than at Christmas…!
Hamster-wise, we are down to just one tiny little hybrid Russian
dwarf hamster, who’s about the size of a Brussels sprout, lol. It’ll be his
first birthday this coming Sunday, and isn’t the time after flying, all the
same! The last of our beautiful Syrian hamsters passed away in October 2022,
and we’ve had none since because the pet shops just don’t stock them any more.
Our local pet shop owner blames Brexit for this; it’s apparently something to do with the cost of transporting the wee critters from England to
Ireland now that England isn’t in the EU any longer. There’s therefore a lot of
pressure on our little dwarf hamster to stay alive for the longest possible
time, because, when he goes, that looks like it…
I’m enjoying this year’s STRICTLY COME DANCING, and am
totally cheering for the dreamy Nigel Harman, formerly Dennis Rickman from EASTENDERS.
He’s aged beautifully, like the finest of fine wines, and if he popped up in my
Christmas stocking, I’d be well chuffed, I can tell you. As the song goes, who
could ask for anything more…?
Toodle-oo until our next catch-up,
Your bewildered friend,
Sandra Harris.
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