Abstract Thursday - Alas, Poor Pumpkin...

I guess I've mellowed over the years, and no longer get wound up by Hallmark Holidays.  After all, they've stolen your Christmas and Easter, why shouldn't they grab a hold of Samhain and give it a good shakedown?

Plus, we are getting older, and new people are arriving in our little lane with children gleefully out to extract as much chocolate as they can from their safe known neighbours. It's a fun community thing. And when the front door is opened by Janet, they don't expect me to come out from behind the camper van... Mwahahahuh.

I may have put a few more candles in our lad than was strictly necessary, and eventually someone knocked us up - not for sweets but to tell us "your pumpkin is on fire..."! Alas, poor pumpkin, I knew him well. And now he's been all Orton'd. And extinguished.

Tomorrow there will be sacrificial soup from his brains, but for tonight Halloween is over and Samhain has it's time. I raise a glass - ok, several glasses - to friends and family gone into mystery.

To my beloved grandparents, to my father, to Grizzly, to Hannah, to Frances, to him and to her and indeed to them; to each and every one of you now standing behind me, trailblazing a path inevitable to us all... you are remembered in honour. 

Slàinte.