Halloween
Yesterday was Halloween. I'm writing this at 1am the next morning, so it really wasn't very long ago. I guess it would still be correct to write “tonight was Halloween”, but I made the mistake of looking at the clock on the computer, and being Dudley Do-right.
We invited several families of friends over to our house for the evening, and spent the last couple of days struggling to get our house somewhere near tidy before wrecking it with zombie police tape, fake spider webs, pumpkins, lights, and various other “spooky” paraphernalia. I think at the height of the evening there were about 50 of us in the house – most of the adults crammed in the kitchen, and the kids running riot.
I hadn't given any sort of costume thought at all until one of our friends commented on the Facebook event “the adults are dressing up, right?” – which meant I had to do something. Ten minutes before most people arrived I found myself sitting in the middle of our lounge, getting my face painted. A skull face, allied with a bin-liner cloak were “my costume”.
I don't really recall a lot about the rest of the night. Sure, I have memories, but they are fragmented, due to the mayhem that unfolded for the next several hours. It was a good kind of mayhem though – the sort you remember with a smile.
A little while after darkness fell, I got the short straw of wandering around the surrounding houses with our small army of children. We had perhaps 12 or 15 kids in our group, and almost felt sorry for the surrounding houses when we descended on them. Our youngest seemed to be in her element, dressed from top to toe as a skeleton, and leading the charge from door to door. Along with several friends, I trailed along behind, counting heads, and picking up the occasional crying child who had dropped their bucket of goodies.
When we arrived back we discovered even more people crammed into our house, and of course the kids started eating their prize. The next hour was pretty much completely out of control – with parents catching up in the kitchen, and children stuffing their faces with rocket fuel. I became an unlikely barman for a couple of hours, opening bottle after bottle of Prosecco.
After everything died down, and we said goodbye to our guests, I played the memories of the evening over in my head while washing up, and couldn't help smiling. We have suchgood friends. We are sofortunate to have come to known so many wonderful families.
Now we just need to figure out how we're going to eat all the cold pizza, chips, dips, and other junks festooned around the house.