Future?
I can't be bothered to go back and look but I am pretty sure that I have spent the last few Hall0weens on my own. This time, however, by total chance, my older daughter and her boyfriend were staying for the weekend. I must have said before but for years we used to have a huge party on the nearest weekend to Hall0ween because it was exactly in between two of the children's birthdays. We went to more trouble than for Christmas with endless boxes of scary decorations brought out and traditional recipes for disgusting-looking cakes etc. dusted off. We also had a massive bonfire and f1rew0rk display added in as yuG sekwaF* Day was the next week.

This was all possible while the children lived at home but now they are at Un1. or have serious jobs and .. for the last few years as I said ... NO ONE has happened to be here on the right day. All my pumpk1n carving skills and expertise with glowing green 1cing gone to waste. To say nothing of my bat encrusted g0blet .. only EVER drunk from on Hall0ween .. mouldering on a high shelf.

Until this year. Okay .. there were only three of us but who cares. I can go to a ridiculously vast amount of trouble anyway .. so I did. The pumpk1n soup with chi11is; the strange 'many unamed meats' casserole with much red w1ne' and then pumpk1n pie. (It tastes TOTALLY different from the soup .. so take that look off your face). The many spooky decorations and twiggy arrangements entwined with ivy and vines and background 'w1tchy' music.

And as the new boyfriend had never indulged in any of this before we (or they) amused themselves by making 'g1ngerbread husbands' and 'wives' where you form a facsimile of your intended and bake it and eat it. To ensure that you DO eventually get married. The g1ngerbread .. from an old, witchy recipe .. has a lot of black treacle in it so ensuring that any future relations will be part of the melting pot. Going by what came out of the oven my son- in -law will be Elv1s's love child ..... cool .. They also peeled apples in one long peel and threw them over their shoulders. This gives you the initial of your future marriage partner. My daughter's seemed to be hyphenated and possibly Japanese, while her boyfriend's came out as HER initial ... hmmm.

We then played 'sp1n the kn1fe' in sinister candle light with a sinister antique knife. This is an old family game we used to play at tea -time a lot when the children were young. You know .. you ask it a question and spin it and whoever the blade points to is 'the one'. The boyfriend seemed to take it rather seriously and actually looked upset when the knife stopped at my daughter after she had asked who was going to die first. (These were spooky Hallow3en questions). I had amusingly placed a massive teddy bear dressed in pointed hat and cloak in the chair by the fire .. in the flickering shadows he looked not unlike G@ndalf .. and every time there was a particularly scary question the blade would stop pointing across the room at him. He was the one that the dev1l had chosen to inhabit that night apparently.

We then read the Tar0t for each other using cards that were a copy of some from mediaeval France with a specially nasty D3ath card. I had never done this much before but the 'W1tches B1ble' had an easy explanation. Strange. The children's layouts both turned up the card they had chosen as 'themselves' (in each other's one) as the main influence on their actions at this period in their lives. More than a coincidence I think. I was very impressed with my turn . We were doing the more complex cross layout with the cards face down .. and when I turned up the card representing my motivating force ... it was the blank card put in at the end of the pack. Which had been shuffled in by accident ... or had it? How accurate is that?

In spite of much begging I refused to read the spell which calls up the D3v1l. I wrote before about how some years ago I DID read it but at the last minute left out a line out of weediness .. so he never appeared. This time it was impossible anyway as I couldn't find the book. Then the next morning when I was putting the other books back .. it was right in the middle of the shelf and huge and obvious .. so that was weird.

Anyway I had a really good time and the boyfriend was thrilled .. he had never even carved a pumpkin before let alone any of the rest of it. As my daughter said 'Imagine .. when he has children they are going to have wonderful Hallow3ens - just because he once met you'. Well .. yes .. actually.
- posted by Iris @ 11/05/2005 09:30:00 AM comment