Halloween seems to have grown from a small optional event which was celebrated within the family or close friends telling ghostly stories and playing duck apples, to a full blown spooky spectacular with costumes, parties and gifts.

Every major store has a selection of ghoulish outfits which are far better than any creation I could possibly make. They seem reasonably priced until I calculate the necessary accessories, multiply by number of children (3) and calculate the amount of times they will be worn in a year (1.)

To ‘Trick or Treat’ or not to ‘Trick or Treat,’ is the question. I only know two sets of neighbours reasonably well. On one side is an elderly couple who jump when I say good morning on a dull day. On the other, friends with two toddlers who find it a nightmare to get them around without one or the other bursting into tears at the scary sights that seem to pop out from every shop. Accompanying the kids to stranger’s homes? They would suggest I did not need a costume, but refuse to go with me.

Halloween parties can be useful but either one child gets invited by a school friend and I have to provide suitably scary entertainment for the others, or I hold the party and cope with the ensuing mayhem, mess and chaos.

As it happens none of them have been invited to parties this year.

They still want to dress up but I have refused to buy costumes and told them to create their own, although I will help. This will stop me getting the blame for any sub-standard efforts.

I have forbidden any door knocking on stranger’s doors and answered all accusations of being unreasonable with ‘yes, I am a witch, what do you expect at Halloween?’

However, I have given them three options.

A family party with gunge, scary stories, duck apples and treats.
A (scary but age appropriate) DVD and a take-away.
Money to forget the whole thing.

The catch is that they all have to agree on a choice by midnight tonight, or all offers are withdrawn and we forget the whole thing……Mooo Harr Harr Harr Harr!!!

How is the mnemonic ‘Spring Forward, Fall Back’ supposed to help anyone remember whether clocks move forward or back? People are as likely to trip and fall forward, or to spring back in surprise.

Why are so many people pedantic about time and punctuality when it can suddenly change overnight? It’s like rehearsing for the wrong play or training for a race, and then somebody moving the finishing line (legitimately.)

Everyone feels cheated when the clocks go forward because they have to ‘lose’ an hour in bed, but they have the perfect excuse to be late for work. Still if they turned up at the same time the day before, they would have been early. The day the clocks go back is probably the one day in the year when most people get to work on time.

When the clocks go back everyone feels grateful for the extra hour in bed, but if they slept through it they missed it so where’s the benefit?

Adjusting all the clocks and watches at home and at work is likely to waste some or all of the saved hour, and let’s hope it’s a rotten day and not your wedding day on the day the hour is lost.

Women Attend work unless work policy states otherwise, when she catches up on chores instead.
Men Take a week off work.

Women Go to bed earlier than usual
Men Spend three days in bed.

Women Drink lots of fluids – honey and lemon or herbal teas are good.
Men Drink lots of fluids – beer is good.

Women Turn the TV off because it gives them a headache.
Men Don’t open their eyes for anything, apart from watching TV.

Women Cook the family easy to swallow meals so she can eat them too, and keep going.
Men Don’t swallow anything unless somebody makes them their favourite meal.

Women Try to save their voice by ignoring bad behaviour, mess and phone calls
Men Only speak in a whisper, unless of course their football team scores.

Women Use cough mixture for a tickly throat, and carry on.
Men Suffer a coughing fit, when asked to do anything.

Women Use throat lozenges to help them converse when unexpected visitors drop by.
Men Suffer a coughing fit before bravely telling visitors that they are fine, so they get gifts.

Women Ask someone else to stop by the shop, but don’t hold their breath that they’ll remember.
Men Suffer a coughing fit just before they ask their partner/mother/nurse for something, just to make sure they are top priority.

Women Go out to celebrate, when they feel well again.
Men Convalesce for three weeks afterwards by taking it really easy at work and at home.

See, ‘Sorry Ladies I’ve got Man Flu’ for a queasy video.

My own version of the glossy magazine article I’ve just read. ‘ 20 things I keep in my fridge’

• Some sticky spillage that has dried on the button so the light takes three seconds to come on.
• A lip gloss.
• Dish of green gunge which could be leftover spinach, pea soup, mint sauce or a school experiment which the children have long since forgotten.
• Home-made bird cake with a suspicious hole scraped in it as though somebody has tasted it.
• Brown meaty stuff in a cling film covered dish which could be dog food or casserole leftovers.
• Folklore chutney that looks as though its made from garden bugs
• A cool-eyes headache soother.
• Green trimmed yoghurt
• A group of mushrooms in a container which could be (a) mushrooms or (b) fungi growing on some long since shrivelled foodstuff.
• A plastic yellow brick which turns out to be ancient cheese.
• A jar of mincemeat dated 1999.
• A water filled polythene glove (preparation for Halloween)
• A misshapen once melted, chocolate bar.
• Three quarters of a bottle of disgusting wine meant for cooking when I remember to add it.
• A plastic fork, wrapped in cellophane.
• Half a tub of dead cress.
• Flat, sparkling water.
• Half a shrivelled onion open side on a plate (that explains the smell.)
• Out-of-date cough mixture
• A notice to self, hanging down from the top shelf saying -CLEAN FRIDGE!

Never underestimate the true value of everyday items.

Lipsticks to write with when there is no pen.

Mobile phones with inbuilt cameras when a mirror is not handy.

A long scarf, as an emergency dog lead.

A garlic press or nut cracker for difficult bottle lids and to help unscrew hooks or screws.

A suitable drill bit or long screw (used with the above) as an emergency corkscrew.

Empty beer bottle as a portable TV aerial holder.

Electric shaver to smooth away the bobbly bits on woollys.

Why are kids never aware that they’ve got them? Little heads where each hair has lice like the M25 has cars, bob around whispering and giggling, right next to friends, who soon have their own hairway of infestation.

Why do leaflets always show a detailed drawing of a nit? Is it supposed to make us feel better or worse that they are creeping round our child’s and probably our own heads? Are we supposed to check that what we are destroying matches the picture – and what if it doesn’t?

Why is it that every school letter about nits always says that they prefer clean hair as though nits are presented with some kind of menu of heads to choose from? ‘Yes I fancy a clean head wearing chamomile shampoo. How about you darling?’ ‘Sounds lovely darling, and let’s have a nice auburn colour today.’

Is the child who always has nits and is never kept home, ever given one of these letters to take home and is it passed on to the parents? Do they read it and realise it applies to their child? Are their child’s nits actually household pets? Or are they vegans so extreme that they cannot bring themselves to kill a living nit?

Do nits have some kind of nit nav system to help them to find the fastest route from head to head?

Why does the lotion always smell of lemons combined with bleach and urine, and why does it have to stay on for an hour? Is it a type of aversion therapy to encourage regular use of the nit comb in future? Or so that the residual pong warns others to stay away so they don’t catch any surviving nit?

Pies.

I sat in a coffee shop at the only available table where somebody had left a half eaten pie on a plate. Before it was whisked away I couldn’t help noticing the grey sludge inhabiting the pastry case. I’ll never buy a pie again.

http://www.weeklygripe.co.uk/a250.asp

They must have been invented to hide rotten meat or cooking disasters.

Times were hard when Mrs Figgis made goulash for hubby with leftover’s from the previous weeks leftover’s. She cut off the green bits and picked off the maggots before mixing it with gravy and potato.

‘I’m not eating this’ hubby said looking at the heap of unappetising brown gunk on his plate. He got bread and cheese instead but Mrs Figgis couldn’t bring herself to throw the gunk out so she added the left over stale bread and a sad lump of cat food and was just about to throw in some left over pastry when she had a eureka moment. She put the pastry in a dish, put the filling in the middle and put a lid on.

‘What’s this?’ Mr Figgis asked.

‘A pi….’ Starting to say ‘a pile of poo’ and stopping herself.

‘A pie?’ he takes a bite. ‘Mmmmm yummy. I like pie.’

Next day Mrs Figgis serves pie again, but leftover baked beans and stale cheese are added to the mixture. Hubby is pleasantly surprised when he takes a bite. ‘It’s different!’ he exclaims.

Now she’s on a roll. Meat pie, potato pie, mince and onion, cheese and onion, jam, lumpy custard…. Food manufacturers catch on and realise they can throw eyeballs, tails and old abscesses and not worry too much if the odd rat gets included in the mixture.

Nowadays it is easy to hide a tracking device in a pie and follow someone’s movements until nature takes its course, obviously their last movement is recorded at their last movement…so to speak.

http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/b/big_bottom.asp

We can sit on a hard chair in comfort.

Large bottomed mothers attend more school plays and functions leading to greater self esteem in their children.

Committees where the majority consists of large bottomed females get more done because they extend the meeting time by approximately one hour.

Big bottomed women attend church regularly. (Although churches are now starting to provide pew cushions to encourage smaller bottomed individuals to attend.)

Alien invaders communicate with that part of our body first – and are pleased with the intelligent response.

We can still look slim and gorgeous…from the front.

We have no need of an extra float when learning to swim.

Pickpockets, who steal up from behind, can’t get close enough to get their hands in our bag or pocket.

Men want to be the one behind, when forming a train at parties.

Nobody expects us to ride a bicycle.

Nobody seriously expects us to wear a thong (without it being mislaid for days.)

It breaks our fall if we drink too much at parties (when young) or tumble downstairs (when older) Learning to fall properly on a big bum can be a life-saver for ladies over sixty with brittle bones.

‘Does my bum look big in this?’ Is the perfect lie detector. If he lies about that can we ever trust him again?

Behind every great woman is a big bum. (But when he leaves she can at least sit down in comfort!)

Office temp work is useful when you’re a single Mum but it is about as interesting as used bath water. When I find myself calculating how the hourly rate converts to the minute rate so I can use that as the benchmark of achievement as time passes, I am seriously bored.

Whether replacing a PA, office manager or filing assistant, I get tasks such as filing, envelope opening or franking, shredding documents, answering the most futile enquiries and buying or making the drinks. The monotony is only broken by the introduction of another boring task. If I could just unscrew my head, before attending, everything would be fine – just arms and hands doing the work with no need for thinking or speaking.

As I am not going to be a permanent fixture, everyone acts as they wish they could act with the majority of their colleagues and ignores me. They talk around me, over me and near me without directing one measly sentence my way, (because I know nothing about what they are discussing and will not be around long enough to find out.) By the end of the day I feel invisible, like a little office ghost, especially when I say ‘goodbye’, and only one person says it back, almost as an afterthought.

The way they leap at any distraction indicates that they aren’t that interested in their own jobs either. They look up when anyone gets a file, goes to the loo, passes anything to anyone else, yawns or sneezes (great excitement.) Mid-morning they drink coffee, eat lunch and discuss their sandwich fillings. At lunch they scuttle off gleefully to buy more food and return looking slightly sloshed. After a day in this void of non happening it is impossible to fathom what they do with their minds day in and day out.

At least I only shelve mine temporarily.