Halloween

It's Halloween, yet another one of those holidays that has never meant anything personally at all. Never has Halloween made any difference to my life, apart from occasional sightings of drunken students out and about in the distance. Growing up on the outskirts of a poor little village in South Wales, nothing ever happened at all. Much like Christmas, it's a gigantic personal nothing, but so many people seem to enjoy it! How cute!

It might be the dressing up. Is that what the kids like? Or is it the sugar poisoning? We may never know. Halloween is a comparatively new thing for the United Kingdom, and growing rapidly here as well as in Europe. Trick or treating is almost not an event in the country, but pops up in the more urban areas, and candy/pumpkin sales seem to grow every year.

Ah, Halloween, the strangest festival of the year, based in ancient pagan festivals or superstitions? What are the origins of this odd holiday? You can look up the current state of speculation on Wikipedia, but the influences and implications are so mixed at this point as to make a complete hodge podge. Christianity, ghosts and spirits, capitalistic exploitation, witchcraft and booze all ooze into one strange night.

Halloween, Halloween, what strange things have you seen?

It's nice to not have that copy editing project hanging around any more. It not only means other projects are good to go, but also that there is time to go on long bicycle trips to Loughor along the wonderful Wales Coastal Path. Relaxation at last. The golf course looked pretty awesome too, but that's for richer people. You never would have thought it was Halloween.

O.