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
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.
Oh jaysus! Sploicers!
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Good generic Irish accent, I'm impressed!
ReplyDeleteI was at Fab that halloween. Twas an epic night...The Lego man was awesome, he was a lego Shaun of the Dead.
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