Anne Dickens | The Day After Yesterday

Ah, Halloween. It's one of those things that drastically changes in significance once you have children.

In the olden days (i.e. before Izzy), the night in question would arrive, and I could oft be heard saying: "turn off the lights and hide, I don't want the little buggers coming round here begging."

Then, whilst I was cowering in abject darkness, one horde of kids after another would shout through the letterbox, 'you miserable bitch!', sometimes pushing through a dollop of dog shit to emphasise their general dissatisfaction.

That was London, where the kids were hardcore, and where it was also generally accepted that midget zombies could be shooed away with a cricket bat if necessary. Not that I did of course. I don't play cricket. 

Fast-forward to Halloween 2012 and we encounter a different state of affairs. Instead of London, I now live in genteel Oxfordshire, where the kids are more likely to be found discussing the perfect roux. And instead of me being 'bah humbug' about Halloween, there was seven year old Izzy to please. It's a different gravy. I had to raise my bar.

So, to celebrate the occasion, I invited two of Izzy's best mates (May and Chip - short for Chipmunk) around for a mini-Halloween bash (no flies on me, although you can see where they've been). I thought I had excelled myself in the preparation department after purchasing a giant 'ham and pineapple' pizza, and some chocolate mousses in readiness.

But apparently (according to Izzy), we also needed a pumpkin, fake cobwebs, giant spiders and a whole load of other guff that I hadn't bought. That's probably why one of my nicknames is, 'hostess-with-the leastess'. Crikey, I only have a kitchen because it came with the house.

My only redeeming feature was that I had been sent a whole load of Halloween freebies by Asda (Izzy chose her own outfit from the selection), so at least Izzy had a costume to go trick-or-treating in, and some costume make-up.

And because I am like Mother Theresa, except that I would have a facelift if I became that wrinkly, I have got some photographs for you ................











There was also another amazing thing - the weather. There had been torrential rain all day, but it stopped at exactly 6pm (when we left the house) and resumed again at exactly 8pm (the time we went to the pub). It was like divine intervention or something.



And here is the story in type: "Once there was a girl called Scarlett. One day she was getting married to a boy called Tom. She looked so pretty in her beautiful wedding dress. She went looking for a rose at a brickwall castle.

She was near the woods when she saw a man on a horse. It was black and huge and the man had no head. He was the headless horseman. Scarlett was scared, she screamed and ran away. The headless horseman chopped off her head with his huge axe and she was dead.

She arose from the dead and she had long fangs. Her dress was disgusting! There was cobwebs on it and black roses.

Then she found him and she bit him on the neck. Then Tom turned into a vampire and spent the rest of his life scaring people to DEATH!"

The End."

I might have to give her a guest slot on me blog!

So dahlink, on a different note, how did your Halloween night go?

I'm under seige I am. A bit like the Last of the Mohicans (that's the only siegey-type thing I could think of). Except that I'm not using a twig to defend myself against gunfire. Although I might as well be.

Yep, I am rapidly losing the battle against a plague of mosquitos who have taken up residence in my back garden. Apparently, a 'perfect storm' (opens in a new window) of horrendously wet weather throughout the summer, combined with fairly warm temperatures, has provided the perfect breeding ground for the relentless little bastards.

It's a bit like living in an Amazonian rain-forest, but without any cool shit that you would get in a tropical habitat: like sunshine, exotic flora and fauna, frogs with long tongues, copulating orang utans, lurking crocodiles, bird-eating flowers, and men in loin cloths killing wild boar with a single shot of their poisoned dart.

Except that I live in Oxford. And the most exotic animals that we get round here are cows. And pigeons. And sometimes I spy ants carrying out the breadcrumbs from my kitchen because I am a bit slovenly about housework. But sadly no men in loin cloths. The men here all wear tweed jackets with leather patches at the elbow, because that makes you intelligent.

But still, back to the matter in hand. I am being slowly bitten to death by the berluddy mozzies.
 

Despite wearing 'Mosquito-Proof Jungle Formula Spray' (whenever I remember to apply it), I am still sporting between 40 - 50 mozzie bites all over my legs and torso, and it's getting worse every night.

Yet Izzy and Naughty George remain bite-free. What the blazes is that all about then?

I implore you ..... if you know any tricks for getting rid of the buggers, can you let me know? I am beginning to look like a victim of Leprosy, except I haven't had any limbs fall off. which is handy in the day-to-day scheme of things.

Maybe I should spend tomorrow inventing a Mozzie blow-torch?

Look forward to hearing from you dahlink!

P.S. Update! After writing this post, I had a parcel arrive in the post. Some kind people from a company called 3M Select, had read about my plight, and sent me this ..........

Dahlink! I don't know about you, but I am bally glad that Friday has arrived. It has been one thing after another this week. And it feels like someone has flipped open the top of my skull and given my brain a bloody great hammering with a Kenwood (TM) electric whisk.

As well as all the other crap that I told you about in my last post (opens in a new window), I have managed to break the back of my iPhone again (in my defence I have stone floors throughout my house, which are very unforgiving). The Ebay man who sells me the iPhone backs will probably send me a magnum of Bolly this Christmas ...... and still make a profit.

And Naughty George crapped and pissed in the kitchen again last night, but this time it was due to the fact that I didn't take him on his normal one and a half mile drag (because I was sorting out my new tyre). He's like a Guantanamo Bay prisoner with his dirty protests. I might buy him an orange doggy jump-suit and refuse him access to a lawyer.


I digress. Back to freebies. In the last year and a half, I have had quite a large number of marketing and advertising agencies bunging me free stuff, asking for it to be featured on my lil ol' blog.

Crikey, I have all kinds of things arrive at my house. For example ...... tickets to West End shows, back-packs full of treats for Naughty George, a high-definition camera, free lunches at exclusive restaurants, an electronic front door lock, free school uniforms for Izzy, monthly play-packs, Harry Potter previews, and no end of invites to product launches. And that's not a tenth of it.

I even had someone contact me in order to help raise awareness of badgers. Firstly, why do badgers need to be more prevalent in society? Secondly, given that badgers are wild animals and I have never seen one in real-life, how was I supposed to help? All I know about badgers is that after hearing recent news, there is going to be an (apparently mis-guided) planned cull of them to prevent the spread of Tuberculosis. Were they expecting me to twat one with a spade or something?

Anyway, back to the matter in hand. Freebies. I got sent a load of freebies by ASDA this week because they wanted me to feature their Halloween dressing up collection. But in return they also wanted Izzy to write a 200 word Halloween story. I'll let you know how that goes in a later post.

And because I am turning into a fame-hungry media whore (and because Izzy loved what they sent), I am going to succumb and give you a link to their Halloween website ..... Asda Halloween Stuff (opens in a new window).



So dahlink, what are you getting up to this weekend? Have you experienced the 'Artic Winds' yet?

They hit Oxford today, but because the sun was out at the same time, I decided to do a final cut of the grass before winter (something I should have done in early October). It was ankle high, and because I had left it so late in the season, it took FOUR hours to cut because it was so wet. And I burned out the motor of the mower because a twig got stuck in it's blades. It was smoking and everything. 

Looking forward to hearing from you my lovely!

Sacre bleu! If I didn't have the mettle of a Grecian warrior, I would have quite simply perished this week.

You know what I mean .... everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. In the UK we call it 'Sod's Law', although I don't know who Sod is, or why his parent's chose to call him that. Or why he had a law named after him. What I do know, is that I have always fancied having a dog called Sod.

It's because you can talk to strangers and say things like, "that's my little Sod over there." Except that I wouldn't say that to old people here (in my small village), because they think that words like 'sod' and 'bloody' are swearing.

I know that from personal experience, because I once said to my elderly neighbour; "avoid the bloody dobbin in that field over there, because it's got murderous bastard hooves."  the minute I said it, I knew I had done wrong. She clasped her hand over her mouth, her eyes widened, and I could almost see the ticker-tape flashing in front of her retina on repeat; ... harlot .....harlot ..... harlot.

That's the countryside for you. It's so .... ummmmm .... genteel. When I lived in London, 'fuck' was a punctuation mark. And no one would have batted an eyelid if I had run around the streets naked. Not that I would mind you, I specifically bought a car so I didn't have to run anywhere.

Bloody hell, I am the queen of digression today. Back to the crap week ..... If you are my friend on Facebook (and if you aren't, why not?!), you will know that things haven't gone to plan, namely:

1. I spilt a litre of milk in my kitchen. And I can safely say that a litre of liquid goes for miles if you drop it in such a way that the plastic bottle explodes (with the liquid going under the cooker, fridge, sideboard and units)

2. I nearly totalled my car when a lorry slammed on the brakes in front of me. In utter horror, I shouted, "I say, Sir! That manoeuvre was terribly dangerous!" ... or words similar to that but maybe containing more 'Fs'.

3. I had an appointment with the Dentist from the film 'Marathon Man'. She managed to stick a pointy probe in every single sensitive, nerve-tingling orifice

As you may remember, in my last taxidermy post (Dog Sick and Taxidermy gone wrong .... part 3),  I promised you a Grand Finale when it came to making use of dead animals.

Governments are pressing us to become ever more "environmentally friendly", so it makes sense to turn our dead mutts and cats into something fun or useful, rather than consigning them to landfill, or flushing them down the toilet (I did that to a dead goldfish once, but I prefer to think of it more as a Viking ceremony).

Anyway, I was doing a bit of research about innovative uses for dead pets, when I stumbled across a Dutch artist called Bart Jansen. His pet moggy (Orville) was unfortunately squashed by a juggernaut. But after Bart had peeled Orville off the road, and subsequent resuscitation attempts had failed, he made a decision ..... that Orville must live on, in one guise or another.

In a stroke of genius, he decided to capitalise upon Orville's lamentable and procumbent state by ....... turning him into an 'Orvillecopter'.

First of all, Bart stuffed Orville, thoughtfully retaining the characteristics of his flattened demeanour. Then he teamed up with a helicopter expert to attach the flying mechanisms. As Bart said himself, the results were 'artwork'.

And because I am like Mother Theresa (except that I don't wear sackcloth skids), I have got some pictures for you ...........





How cool is Orvillecopter? And the beauty is, that you don't necessarily have to have a dead pet to hand, unlike most taxidermy projects. It would be really easy to improvise using roadkill. Imagine Badgercopter or Squirrelcopter! That would outdo the neighbours ..... unless they were the ambitious type and took things a stage further with Deercopter .... or even Cowcopter.

So dahlink ..... can you out-taxidermy Bart? The gauntlett has been thrown down ........

Hurray! No more posts about my holidays which means that I can go back to doing what I enjoy most ....... talking random shit. Don't get me wrong, I do like writing about holidays, but it always takes ages because there are a squillion images that need editing, and whenever I resolve to do it, a new episode of Dragon's Den or Downton Abbey pops up. And I always succumb because I am probably weaker than Paris Hilton's pelvic floor.

On a totally unrelated note, you will be pleased to hear that after the 'crapping in the kitchen' saga, Naughty George is back to his old self.

After getting up at 7.30 this morning, I went downstairs to make myself a cup of tea. NG hauled himself out of his basket, woofed at me vacuously for 30 seconds whilst I was waiting for the kettle to boil, and then proceeded to spew copiously next to my foot .... heave after gut-wrenching heave.

If I had to pinpoint a positive arising from the general scenario, it was that his puke was very well formed. I could quite clearly make out all the mushrooms he had eaten because they looked like they had just been chopped, except they were tinted a biley-orangey colour.

But perplexedly, I hadn't given him any food with mushrooms in.

What's that all about, then? That's my Georgie ............................

After puke-gate, I decided to do some more research into one of my favourite hobbies .... discovering interesting things you can do with dead pets. After all, it seems such a waste to just bury them. And I have found some cracking uses for our dead companions in the past: 'When Taxidermy goes Wrong' and 'Addicted to Taxidermy: It's Dead Good' (both open in new windows).

And because I am like Ghandi, but with a better hairstyle, I have got some new taxidermy pictures to inspire you when Rover carks it .......









But my research has made me happen upon a Grand Finale when it comes to dead animals ...

I am not going to post about it now, but if you let me know what you would do with your dead pet, then I might just think about it.... ha ha ha (evil James Bond Baddy Laugh).

"Where the bloody  hell have you been?" I hear you cry, "you don't blog, you don't phone and you don't send me flowers."

In my defence, I should point out that I never send anyone flowers. Simply because I could spend the money on more useful gifts like a set of spanners. I know what I would rather have, and suffice to say a bunch of pansies ain't going to help me change a flat tyre.

Back to the matter in hand. The last week or so has been a bit of a blur, comprising lots of random shit, and exacerbated by red wine. I'm telling you, the stress of it all would have found a lesser person wondering naked through the streets of Forest Hill, wringing their hands and mumbling; "where did Bitty go? Where's Bitty?" (P.S. I don't know who Bitty is either.)

Here is an example of some of the random shit ......




Anyway, enough of that random shit, I wanted to finish off this post by showing you some more pictures from my Cornwall holiday (this is the last of the Cornwall series - huzzar! I can do some new stuff tomorrow! Huzzar squared!).  If you can remember, Izzy and I went on holiday to Cormwall with Sarah and her friend, Gary, and on the last day we decided to visit a place called St Michael's Mount.

St Michaels Mount is an island with a Medieval castle built on it's summit. I say 'Medieval', but in reality, it's history spans a huge amount of time


So I am going to do a bit of history for you. But not too much. If I try to do too much "history", I lose interest and always end up playing Angry Birds on my iPhone. Or even better, that Flight Controller game. I managed to land 32 consecutive aircraft yesterday.

I digress. Back to the history of St Michael's Mount: In 350 BC (yep, before Jeez), the mount was a key port for trading tin to the rest of Europe. In 1135AD the stone church was built on the top. Following that date, there were centuries of scrapping done over the mount, some of which involved the Spanish Armada. The general scrapping ended in 1647 when Colonel John St Aubyn was nominated Captain of the Mount (woof! how many men would like that title?). He bought the Island in 1659, turned it into a private home, and his descendants have lived there ever since (and still do, although they have had to redecorate a number of times).

And because I am like Mother Theresa, except that I don't wear scratchy crackers ...... I have got some pictures for you .........





I got a bit curious about the references to Giants, so I did a bit of research ........ and here is the explanation (from the St Michael's Mount website - I nicked it):

"As you start to ascend the path leading to the Castle on St Michael's Mount, you'll walk past the Giant's Well - and a rock called 'The Giant's Heart', which is well marked.  Both these are references to another Cornish legend.  Jack the Giant Killer allegedly dug the well while the evil giant Cormoran was sleeping.  As dawn broke, Jack blew on his horn and when Cormoran woke and rushed towards Jack he was blinded by the sun and he tumbled into the well; his heart flew 50 yards up the hill in the process - and that's the Giant's Heart that is in the stonework to this day.  The well is to be found at OS Map Reference SW515298."



























So dahlink, I have two tasks for you: (1). What have you done in the last weekend? and; (2) tell me about the oldest place you have ever visited.