The Bluestocking - Raiders of the Lost Sparp

[lcakethereforeIam]

Welcome everyone. Wipe your feet, it's been wet out.

Don't forget to namechange before posting if necessary.

Halloween was a non-event for my entire childhood, both when we were abroad and when we were in the UK (rural East Anglia).

Bonfire night was the thing here.
And does anybody else remember Whitsun parades - when all the Scouts, Brownies etc walked to church for a big service?

NW. I don't remember Halloween being much of a thing. It still had its apostrophe. Bonfire night was popular, although I don't remember many organised events. It was all back garden bonfires and Standard fireworks. Rockets fired from sterilised milk bottles because they had narrow necks.

Halloween was also a non-event in my Yorkshire childhood, but where my kids and grandchildren live in Hertfordshire they seem to do the same dress-up and trick-or-treating that the kids in my neighbourhood here do.

Funnily enough I think it started to catch on with ET (extra terrestrial not employment tribunal).

Halloween was not a thing in my childhood either.

I never went guising myself, because it just wasn't my thing, but most kids did. Bobbing for apples was already a bit old hat, but carving the turnip was fun.

In my Lancashire childhood in the 1950s I never heard Halloween even mentioned, let alone saw it marked. When our two were children in the 70s & early 80s in rural Mid-Wales, Halloween still wasn't a thing, though the huge success of E.T. in 1982 meant they at least knew what it was about. Even our 3 grandsons, all now in their early 20s, didn't seem to bother about it, once they were beyond primary school where all the kids seem to love it.

However, like you, Bonfire Night figured largely as a late autumn celebration. No apple-bobbing in my experience in Lancashire or our bit of Mid-Wales, but our own small bonfire and firework display and homemade treacle toffee were essential and hugely enjoyed.

When my kids were little, large municipal displays weren’t really a thing on any scale, so we used to get together with another family with kids our children’s age and have a little bonfire in the back garden. Each family brought a box of fireworks and we used to let the kids take turns choosing a firework which would then be ceremoniously lit and oohed and ashed at. I used to serve up baked potatoes, sausages and baked beans, parkin for dessert and mulled wine for the grown ups. It was always a fun evening.

It doesn't surprise me that Halloween wasn't a big thing in England - it is a continuation of the Celtic Samhain festival, and deeply rooted in Irish culture.
Which is why it is so sad to see it being replaced by an Americanised ghoulfest, its sad to see traditions that lasted millennia disappear in a generation.

I thought it was something to do with Irish culture which i suppose is how it caught on in the USA.

The place where everything and anything is a profit making opportunity.

its like Mothering Sunday etc etc,

Bar gerbils can i have a Windsor toastie and a Mountbatten cocktail please (with a cherry on top)

MN willing may I present the Halloween biscuits. Unfortunately my photography skills aren't much better than my icing skills.

False modesty!

We did a small back garden fireworks too. DM made treacle toffee but iirc that was the only edible tradition we kept. Broken up and the bits wrapped in greaseproof paper.

I used to love making toffee. That's probably why, in adulthood, my teeth feel like Sir Keir Starmer has just declared his full confidence in them.

I might make some more cinder toffee for bonfire night but with treacle instead of golden syrup. Also halve the quantities so there's not so much of the stuff.

When I was a kid, a huge pile of wood would appear on the green as if by magic. Then it would be set alight, people would set off fireworks and everybody would share fudge, toffee apples, sausage twists, mini burgers etc.

Now I live in a village about 5 miles away and it is exactly the same.

thats a good turn of phrase! (Tbf you could probably have substituted the name of any prime minister in there - it’s one of those phrases which seems to mean they’ll be here for a day or two more, tops, while they negotiate jump or push.)

poor old teeth

I never got to that book launch - the drive was through quite horrendous rain and when, after about 20 miles, the friend who was driving had to pull off the road because the wipers couldn't keep up, we texted an apology to the author and went back home. Of course the rain slowed down as soon as we turned round, but there were enough flooded chunks of road that we felt justified.

Somehow my spelling correction removed the sentence about the three travellers then ending up in a restaurant in our local town, setting the world to rights and eating food somebody else cooked.

So - I had a bedtime only about half an hour later than usual, very nice.

Second edit to say yesterday's weather was moderately nasty all round, leading to my ordering home heating oil and 10 sacks of logs - winter starts tomorrow.

Sorry your plans didn’t work out, Dean, but sounds like it was a good evening anyway.
You get through your seasons a bit quicker than I do. It’s definitely autumn awhile longer here - there are still many leaves left to fall, and the first frosts haven’t hit so there are still quite a lot of non hardy flowers out. December, or at earliest the equinox seems to fit the seasons better here. Of course the reality varies each year.

We've had very light frost and there are still some battered flowers around, but the harvest is over, the grass has stopped growing, and the cattle are housed (in the past a lot of them would have been slaughtered after Martinmas), so Winter, the season of sitting round the fire, remembering and praying for our dead friends, telling tales, knitting the wool into warm socks, and feasting on stored and preserved foods is upon us.

On February 1st Brigid will usher in the Spring, lambing, ploughing, fasting through Lent, and by its end ushering us into the chanciest and most dangerous season, Bealtaine, 1st May, the start of Summer and the time that if the new milk comes slowly people starve to death and sinister women put boundary curses on their neighbours and steal the dew off the grass.

I remember a Labour MP back in the 80s, his name evades me... MP for somewhere in East London I think - advised Thatcher's frontbenchers:
'If she says she has confidence in you, I should feel concerned; if she says she has full confidence in you, I should feel worried; if she says she has total confidence in you, I should clear my desk....'

After the turnover of a couple of Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry, he remarked 'Those whom the gods would destroy they first make Secretary of State for Trade and Industry'😄

I managed to find him: Tony Banks, Newham NW.
I used to watch out for him on the parliamentary reports on telly, he was funny. He used to play with the 'Is the Prime Minster aware..' format by asking 'Is the PM aware that my grey parrot has been unwell recently.'
He'd continue with a proper question but I think even Thatcher was amused by him!

Doesn't the "we have full confidence in" curse also apply to football managers?

We’re still autumnal here, but once winter gets going we don’t see spring until April, though in March we do have a fifth season known locally as Mud Season.

March sounds delightful round your way, Brit!