woohoo and yay!

It's that time of year again - two weeks ago I heard the first BANG! and thought I was back in South Africa. Then I realised it wasn't a gunshot but a cracker. Halloween is a-comin...

It amazes me that in a place where fireworks are illegal there are just so many of them around. It's easy enough to come by them though. All you have to do is drive North from here for about an hour and you reach the border of The North (as the Irish refer to Northern Ireland) and right there, a few metres inside the border, are huge signs advertising "FIREWORKS ON SALE HERE". Needless to say the road is a tad busy at this time of year. These people seem to celebrate Halloween for a whole month. I'm beginning to wonder if we are being invaded by a race of aliens cleverly disguised as Halloween Pumpkins - it would be a great way to strategically position thousands of aliens without arousing any suspicion. They walk among us...!

One can't help being caught up in all of this revelry though. The shops are crammed full of Halloween stuff - costumes, pumpkins (or so they'd like us to believe),candles and decorations of all shapes and sizes (as long as they're either orange or black) and huge bags of sweets for trick-or-treaters. I discovered over the weekend that even I am the proud (?) owner of a black witches hat. When did I think I was ever going to use it?! I can only surmise it must have been one of my shopping-while-hungover purchases.

Of course, just past all the Halloween displays, the Christmas goodies are a-waiting, and the day after, all the orange and black stuff will have magically disappeared and been replaced by twinkling red and silver stuff. And then the carols will start (eesh!). I swear the window-dressers must pull an all-nighter on Halloween to change their displays, poor buggers.

Now, you may be wondering why I'm posting about Halloween so far in advance. Well firstly (and I just know you all want to know this) someone was looking for a good idea for a Halloween outfit not so long ago and I promised I would post a pic on my blog for them. So here it is:
I don't know where this photograph originated - someone sent it to me in an email that looked as if has been around the world a few times - but I just thought this was the cleverest Halloween outfit EVER!

And since I'm unlikely to be using the idea myself, I thought someone might be able to make use of it. But if you win a prize, I get 50% of the proceeds, deal?

Oh, and you have to post a pic of yourself in costume on your Blog, too.

The other reason for the slightly premature post is that my friend and her husband are arriving from SA tomorrow so I'll more than likely be spending more time with real people for the next week or so than with my blogging buddies (although I'm sure I can squeeze in a comment or two somewhere).

I am SOOOO excited to see my friend, and the best news is, they're not just visiting, but are actually moving to Ireland. Yay!!! They'll be staying with us for a week before heading to their new home in the south of the country but I am so happy to have her here I'm almost falling out of myself!

So spare a thought for the weary travellers - they will have left Jo'burg by now and have a gruelling long-haul flight ahead of them. Believe me, this is not a fun trip to make. And on top of that I'm sure their hearts are breaking a little at leaving behind their home and their family and their friends and their lives to start anew on the other side of the globe. Been there, done that. It is not an easy thing to do.

But Yay! My friend is coming!