Nothing at all, that is, apart from answering a knock at the front door ten minutes or so ago to find some kids on the step. The one actually looking at me was a little girl, aged about ten. The one that said �Penny For the Guy?� was, I�d guess, considerably older as he had a fairly impressive baritone voice, but as he was hiding behind my car and its dark outside I couldn�t really see him. The third child was sitting on the bottom step, with his back to me, kind of slumped over. His hood was pulled up over his head and his hands were tucked away up his sleeves. Im pretty sure I was supposed to think he was the guy. Whilst I admire the enterprise of going out Penny for the Guy-ing without an actual�ummm�guy, I cant help thinking that perhaps they�ve missed the point of the whole business. Without a pair of your dad�s old trousers and a jumper, stuffed with newspaper, and a �guy head� made from a punctured football with a goatee beard sellotaped on, its just�umm...door-to-door begging, isn�t it? Anyway, I said �Penny for the Guy? Im not done with Halloween yet!� and there was a slightly awkward silence. Then I said �I think you can get up off my step now, love.� And the �guy� got up and walked off down the path, followed by his sheepish looking mates. Bizarre. Im hoping there�s no kind of trick-or-treat retribution type thing with Penny for the Guy denial, otherwise I could be looking at a banger through my letterbox, I guess. Memo to self: fill porch with damp sand before retiring. NB In this context, a �banger� is a firecracker and not a sausage. A sausage in a letterbox is a euphemism, not a punishment.
For overseas readers who may be a bit confused by all that stuff, this linky might help: BONFIRE NIGHT & ASSOCIATED STUFF
There�s a Halloween Party at the workies on Saturday (cant have it on Sunday, it interferes with the Bingo. *makes face*) and I�m completely stuck for a costume. I cant help thinking Im now at the age where the �sexy witch� costume and its ilk are just a bit tragic. Yes, I still have great legs and a reasonably jiggly and bountiful rack but there�s no getting away from the fact that I am, indeed, 44 and there are plenty of younger, jigglier and more bountiful women who would probably be better suited to the �fishnets and pointy hat� ensemble this year.
Trouble is, that just leaves me with the deeply unattractive/uncomfortable/proper scary costumes (zombie/mummy/something with a lot of fake blood) and I don�t really relish looking grim all night, ta very much. I�d also like to be able to go to the loo should the need arise and if I want to genuinely make people jump out of their skin and recoil in horror then I�ll just walk down to Chigley tomorrow morning with no makeup on.
Any ideas? The only thing I can come up with (with 4 days to go and no money) is a kind of ironic �angel� type thing. White robe, beatific expression, feather wings? *sigh*. I know. Its lame. Help please.
First person to suggest a cat (black tights, leotard, �cute� ears etc) gets a punch in the face, btw.
Just been upstairs for a quick look in one of the many dressing up boxes that clutter up the closets of our house and found a blond mullet wig. Was shocked at how much like a dead-behind-the-eyes version of my teenage self I look when wearing it. Perhaps I should go as �what I would look like by now if I had died when I was 19�.
So, quaint customs aside, what�s been occurring?
Well, Sissy had her 50th birthday party at my house. I cooked a ginormous banquet and Pater wrote me a cheque for the whole lot. Hoorah! Actually, it was pretty cheap, considering there were 12 of us and we managed to scoff down 6 courses. �66 all in! Stepfordbro provided the wine (including a jolly splendid Beaume de Venise to go with the puds) and I even managed to rustle up some champagne from my extensive cellar that was left over from my wedding so we had proper Bellinis with our canap�s and everything was lovely. Of course, I had planned to document the whole thing in pictures for your delectation but I was so busy cooking and being cheffy and meeting Stepfordbro�s new girlfriend (more on that later) and then quite busy getting drunk and forgetting that the kids were supposed to be going back to Shagnasty�s (Ooops! Got a rather terse text at quarter to one in the morning and had to throw Mater and Pater out so they could take Jooj and Treacle home for me) and also forgetting that I had bought a confetti cannon and so forgetting to let it off, that I only managed to get pictures of the frosted champagne glasses (peach and gold edible glitter FTW!) and a couple of dishes of dauphinoise potatoes. Oh and there�s a �photostory� kind of thing on how to make filo pastry samosas but we can save that for when there�s no news. Yeh. Cos this stuff is, like, way too riveting to distract you with canap� how-to. Yeh. You know it.
I was just on MSN to Jooj and now she�s mysteriously gone offline. She knows Im a bit rubbish at MSN but Im not so rubbish that I haven�t noticed the �appear offline� button. Meh. Even my kids don�t want to MSN me.
I�d better go, before you go clicking that little red X on me.