Halloween

Say what you will, you Aussie wowsers, Halloween is fun. I did a very modest setup by American standards, but the Aussie kids were bowled over. "Is that a real pumpkin?" many of them asked. (And, indeed, it was, but only because the price at the supermarket had come down from $25 to $10 the day before.) The flame pot was particularly fun to make, as I'd figured out how by seeing a similar thing at, of all things, a State Emergency Service dinner. (No irony is involved: the SES does not fight fires. It's just that it's a whimsical sort of thing, and the SES is not really known for whimsy.)

We gave out a fairly large amount of candy; I told each kid to take two "fun-size" candy bars, as they weren't likely to get the kind of massive haul an American kid can expect. Sadly, what the kids could expect was verbal abuse from a few jingoistic Australians and (allegedly) the threat of hosing from one neighbor, out on her lawn with the hose going (ostensibly, and, I must say, plausibly, for watering her lawn). Every year as more kids have fun with Halloween, more grownups get grumpy and bigoted about it. Yeah, pal, so give up your Japanese electronics and your Indian food and your Christmas trees -- in fact, all you Anglo-Australians, who are the ones complaining the loudest, go back to Great Britain.

But I'm getting myself all riled up again, when what I should be doing is showing you the Halloween setup at our place this year. (What you can't tell from the photos is that I was also playing Halloween oldies and spooky sound effects from my computer.)







And here's the flame pot: