Who you gonna call?

In absence of motivational occurrences to rant about this week, and (perhaps pointlessly) not wanting to disrupt the recent pattern of weekly postings I've somehow achieved, whilst obviously and more importantly not wanting to let my friend Hazel down (wave Haze!) I'll try to knock up an off-the-cuff "what I've done" type blog, so apologies in advance if this lacks somewhat in lengthy rants about petty and trivial events that seem to have (exaggeratively) plagued me, but with my seemingly natural ability to digress beyond all recognition maybe this will inadvertently turn into what I do best. I have come to the realisation that I have a tendency to go on a bit too, so maybe the lack of rant material might be a blessing and will perhaps keep the word count down a bit too, but I'm promising nothing at this stage, baring in mind I'm up to well over 100 words already.


This weekend was one of my favourite events of the calendar (no, not the celebration of the admittance of Nevada as the 36th sate in 1864), Hallowe'en, which still even as a "grown man" is eagerly looked forward to by me every year, ever since I was first allowed to legitimately go begging for E-numbers and loose change round the posh bits of the village (much to their annoyance I'm sure) whilst wearing a 'costume', by which I mean a bin liner with arm holes cut in it complete with cheap plastic mask that made my face moist with my own condensed saliva, under the guise of celebrating a ye olde tradition that I'm not convinced even now I could properly explain without the help of good old Mr Google. Of course I'm a little too tall to get away with that these days, plus I dare say if I knocked on any of the residents doors round these parts they'd either ring the police, or more likely, set their pit bulls on me, so instead I take this as an opportunity to don make up of my own and go get royally trollied whilst most importantly, not be in the house to answer the door to the hordes of kids, whose idea of 'trick' is half a brick through the living room window, and 'treat' is nothing less than tenner. Well, it beats staying at home and sitting upstairs in the dark whilst pretending not to be in and wondering if I should ring the fire brigade in advance or wait until I can smell the smoke of my smouldering car. As it turns out, the kids came round on Sunday, and my plans fell on Saturday, so I didn't actually manage to avoid this as planned at all, but I seem to have a bit of a reputation with the kids round here (edit: hang on, that sounds all kinds of wrong!) but I suppose that's what happens when your introduction to the neighbours is "Hi I'm Dan, I've just moved in at number 12, and by the way, if your kids go missing, it's because I've caught them in my garden again, and locked them in my shed". I shit you not. As a result, we only had two visitors all night, one of which was too impatient to wait for James (my housemate) to answer the door, or maybe was scared off by the sound of me shouting at James to hurry up and answer the fucking door, and another girl called Chelsea who obviously thought I was kidding when I moved in, who when James did answer the door (even though we said we'd take it in turns, but the first one didn't count as he didn’t get there in time) responded not with "trick or treeeaat" but instead with "where's the other one", meaning me. Joy.

The choice of venue for this years fancy dress shenanigans was, originally, the same as last years, FAB Café, as not only are their fancy dress bashes legendary, but they sell Wham bars and Sherbet Fountains behind the bar (all year round, might I add) and have a food menu which includes culinary masterpieces such as fish finger sandwiches, and a bowl of Rusks with warm milk. I don't work for FAB, by the way, I'm just pointing out it's awesometicity (yeah, made up words, I'm that down with the kids) as my own opinion. Everyone goes all out for Halowe'en at FAB with the vast majority of the people all dressed up for the occasion. Well, I suppose a large cash prize for best costume will have this effect, but it really makes for an interesting night which I look forward to all year, minus the hangover days from the previous event. I rather foolishly had gone out for a "quiet drink" with my good friend Sarah the night before which rapidly turned into a full on session, meaning come the day of the big night its self, I was feeling a little rough, to say the least - damn you Revs and your very reasonably priced racks of novelty vodkas, cocktails and lack of dress code / drunk code - but after vegging out on my mums sofa all day it was time to think about getting ready, even if enthusiasm for poisoning myself further was severely lacking at this point. A quick power nap on the sofa, a promise to my better half that we "won't have a late one" (famous last words) and a swift double Jager on arrival soon sorted us out and set the pace for the rest of the night though.



You can literally see the enthusiasm on my face here


For some reason I quite like acting like a big kid and getting all dressed up for the occasion, even if this does seem to surprise people - to quote my friend "You don't strike me as the dressing up type" and upon inquiring why, was told "you're a miserable old man", which is nice (I'm sorry Leah, I won't quote you again for a while I promise) - but I do, although I can't put my finger on one particular reason without resorting to simply saying "it's a bit of a laugh" which although true, lacks definition. Maybe it has something to do with childhood nostalgia, or the feeling of taking part in an event, or the element of competition maybe, I am quite competitive, I'm told. Mainly it's just an excuse to go out, have a giggle at my own expense, and chat complete shit with absolute strangers, although the fancy dress aspect does seem to provide opportunity to some quite questionable characters that have "lost" (never had in the first place) their friends to tag along for a little bit. I'm usually pretty transparent in terms of making it absolutely clear I have no interest in exchanging pleasantries with piss annoying loners, but for some reason this ability seems to be partly lost whilst in fancy dress get up, so I have to try that little bit harder at this time of the year, without been blunt, of course. One aspect I do enjoy is being able to get away with, no, express my god given right, to judge compete strangers based purely on appearance. A lot of people put huge amounts of time and effort into their costumes for the night and I applaud them for it, and whilst there are a fair few strange choices of characters - The Dude, Vincent Vega, and Papa Lazarou for example… ok I'll give you the latter, but my point on the first two remains - over all the motley crew of costumes is pretty impressive. There is a flip side to this however (and listen up girls of Leeds because I'm probably talking about you here), whilst overall the collection of costumes is very respectable, there are of course the few examples of less respectable "efforts" that have turned up to take the opportunity of justifying to their boyfriends dressing more "provocatively" than can be spotted on the corner of Spencer Street. Having actually put a little effort in my self I'm perfectly entitled to get on my soap box about this bit, even if by "effort" I actually mean "rummage round the house for the bits of costume I've worn for the last three years running" (I'll go as something else next year I swear). Whilst turning up wearing cat ears and black lipstick with matching feather boa and knickers, or 'sexy' devil horns and ill-fitting red sequin hot pants might be classed as fancy dress down at Oceana, and might even contribute to you getting laid even if you are too fat for that nurses dress, it's not quite up to par with FAB's standards it seems. The apparent motto of "if in doubt, tits out" unfortunately won't get you in the photo archives of til-late.com here at least, so you may as well fuck off over the road to Yates and clear some space at the bar for those with massively oversized cardboard heads where you stand a much better chance. But thanks for coming all the same, and see (hopefully less of) you next year.

Eventually, and until next year, the random conversations with film characters came to an end, and it was time to try and flag down a rather bemused taxi driver (because there was absolutely no way I was walking down the road to the rank looking like this), after being wished fare well by Stay-Puffed with the parting words of "you best get yourself off home mate, you look like death!"

Budum-tsshh.

Oh and for those interested, the winner of £150 was a chap dressed as a life size Lego man. No, I don't get what this has to do with Hallowe'en either, but it was impressive all the same.