Friday Five: Cat Memes

Because nothing cheers me up quite like cats, here is some feline therapy.

Friday Five: Cross-Stitch Halloween

In the lead-up to Halloween, I thought I'd share these cross-stitch designs. I appreciate that although it is a Friday Five, there are only four of them and one of them is of Wednesday. Spooky!

 

Friday Five: Halloween Cross-Stitch

It does feel very odd to me that the seasons are back to front here and certain festivals occur at the 'wrong' time of the year. Halloween falls between Harvest Festival and Guy Fawkes Night. It occurs as the nights begin to draw in and there are more shadows and misty corners in which things can lurk and our fears and anxieties can grow if left unattended. To me it is tied to the Gaelic festival of Samhain, which marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the 'darker-half' of the year. 

As with many things the ancient pagan, mythical, religious roots have largely been consumed by consumerism and capitalism. I dislike that intensely. I do, however, like the idea of making the connections with the liminal world more comforting and less frightening. To this end, I have enjoyed stitching these designs. 

5 Halloween Cross Stich Designs:

Friday Five: Killer Vegetables

Because yesterday was Halloween and lots of people were doubtless carving Jack o'lanterns, it  made me reflective on the nature of pumpkins. I love pumpkin - in spicy coconut type soups, in rich tomato stews or roasted with the parsnips and potatoes to accompany a joint. I've never been a huge fan of pumpkin pie but that's part of my dislike of mixing savoury and sweet. There are some wonderful pumpkin ales that I look forward to seeing on the market in autumn, but that's a post for another time. (Autumn, perhaps.)

But I hate chopping it. I even consider buying it pre-chopped from the supermarket, although I never acually have because that seems to me be the height of laziness, along with pre-grated cheese or pre-peeled oranges - they sell those in Marks and Spencer. Well, I am vindicated, because it turns out that pumpkins are top of the dangerous vegetable list  yes, there is one. According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) tens of thousands of people every year are admitted to hospital with injuies inflicted from trying to chop pumpkin, and root vegetables are responsible for two-thirds of kitchen injuries.

Advice to avoid such injuries includes the ostensible paradox of having sharp knives, and choosing a vegetable peeler for the task where appropriate. Chopping your vegetables too fast is also hazardous admonishes the survey of more than two thousand customers carried out by an on-line takeaway service (slightly biased motives, anyone?). Two fifths of the participans confessed they had injured themselves by trying to imitate the methods of the TV chefs.

5 Most Dangerous Vegetables:

1. Pumpkin - I agree with RoSPA - tasty but dangerous (a bit like Christopher Eccleston)
2. Onion - I don't suppose it helps that they make me cry so I have to close my eyes while cutting them up
3. Beetroot - they stain everything, and if you forget that you've eaten it, the next time you go to the toilet will be terrifying
4. Artichokes - the social embarrassment of not knowing what to do with it can be crippling
5. Leeks - one was thrown at Ashley Cole in a Wales v England match in 2011 (what an original insult) and Fluellen beats Pistol up with one and then forces him to eat it in Henry V. Depending on how badly this is taught in schools, it can poison children against Shakespeare for life. 

Travels and Tribulations 4

Now that things are sort of back to normal and the holiday period is over, I shall break up the working week with continued reminisces of our overseas trip. And we are now up to the good ole U S of A...

A long day of flying starts at 3am when we get up to leave the hotel and head for the airport. Being in enforced proximity to people is horrible; you see how selfish, rude and insular most people are. I get constantly irritated by them. Oscar was right, as ever. Hell really is other people.

Unbelievably we collect our luggage, get through customs and pick up a hire car with no problems at all. San Francisco is an infinitely friendlier airport than LAX. I swear they play good cop; bad cop – San Francisco is, ‘Welcome to America; enjoy your stay’ – LAX is, ‘what do you want, alien; don’t step out of line; when are you going home?’

We pick up our 2l-engined, big-boot-spaced ‘small car’ (everything is, of course, bigger in America, even the toilet rolls – as Him Outdoors observed) and set off. Except, we have no map, no money and no cell phone reception. I can’t phone my friend (Our Gracious Hostess) with whom we’re meant to be staying for directions as arranged, so we just get on the freeway and head south.

Despite an overheating car, we do quite well, managing to pull off the freeway at Redwoods and, thanks to some friendly car wax salesmen, an ATM at a petrol station, a hurriedly-purchased map and some dubious navigation, we arrive at Our Gracious Hosts’ place in the late afternoon.

We wander about in a jetlagged haze admiring the Halloween decorations (pumpkins and black cats everywhere!) and eating grapes on the patio overlooking their little lake. Their house features a sort of courtyard surrounding a nut tree. As I peer out of the windows, I see squirrels digging holes (black ones as well as greys – the blacks are sleeker with less fluffy tails and actually look quite rat-like).

A deer comes down to the lake to eat the grass and shake its long floppy ears. Our Gracious Hostess says they’re all pests as they nibble the roses and all other plants. I’m sure they are, but they’re so cute! ‘I’ve seen cuter things,’ she says laconically. She is not alone in this viewpoint.

Our Gracious Hostess keeps prodding us awake and won’t let us fall asleep until Our Gracious Host comes home with Mexican takeaways. When he goes back out to play football, we gratefully collapse into bed in the guest wing.

Happy Halloween

A friend asked me yesterday, 'Halloween - yes or no?', to which I have to say a resounding yes.

When we were kids, one of my very best friends was American (actually, she still is, but we're no longer kids). She introduced me to 'trick or treating', of which I'm not a great fan - it always seemed a bit too like begging. But she also introduced me to 'Halloween candy', dressing up, outrageous decorations, lots of black and orange, playing ridiculous party games and scaring ourselves silly. I loved the Jack o'lanterns. I loved apple bobbing. I loved eating cream buns hanging from the ceiling by a thread with your hands tied behind your back.

As I got older I went through a New Age, pagan sort of phase involving lots of candles, ribbons and bad poetry. I communed with cats and tried to see the good in toads. I learned about masculine and religious oppression and I celebrated the female goddess worshippers; the medieval healers and midwives who were persecuted and hanged or burned at the stake for offending the patriarchal establishment.
One Halloween Him Outdoors took me up Pendle Hill, site of the infamous Lancashire witches, ten of whom were hanged for witchcraft in 1612. It was dark and quite spooky. People trudged up there to light bonfires and join covens. I have only dabbled and never specifically tried to invoke the dark side. I don't know if I believe in a dark side and certainly wouldn't want to invoke it. I was scared of the people who believed they were conjuring with black magic.

So I no longer really know what to believe. But I enjoy so-called Pagan Festivals - like May Day, Yule, Candlemas, Midsummer, and, naturally Halloween. I worry that it is too easy to get too serious about such things however, and would like to remind you to treat Halloween responsibly and not to leave alcohol around pumpkins.