Sour Pumpkins

I have just returned (late – because of the French strikes) from The Homeland, to a lovely sunny, orange-leafed weekend, where Winter has decided to sneak off again, and wait round the corner for the proper time make its entrance. It is All Hallows Even and we have a huge pumpkin sitting outside the house on the garden table. Sadly, those two statements are not related.

In Derby, all the shops are stuffed full-to-bursting with orange and black Halloween-related paraphernalia. On my first trip to the supermarket when I arrived there last Thursday, I was greeted by aisle-clogging displays of supposedly giant pumpkins. I think not! Compared to the beasts we now have stored in our barn loft, those pumpkins were mere marbles! But even though they elicited nothing but a snort of derision from Yours Truly, they were clearly very much in demand. A week later, my son’s friend (presumably planning some child-related seasonal festivity, rather than a culinary excursion) rang him to ask if he knew of anywhere that still had pumpkins for sale. It seems that the Derby supply of would-be jack-o’-lanterns had sold out like turkeys at Christmas.

Now I have to admit that I am not a natural party person. And the commercialisation of festivals such as Christmas and Halloween has in the past tended to bring out the bah-humbuggery of my grumpy but oh-so-socially-conscious disposition. But returning from a city full of shop and pub windows festooned with spray-on cobwebs, and parties full of face-painted children dressed as skeletons and witches, to the peaceful, people-and-hype-free land of Blanchetière, makes me feel just a little sad.

Our pumpkins are pig food. Our cobwebs are real. Our Halloween precedes All Saints Day, notable only for the fact that there will be no post, because it is a public holiday. Somehow, I’d like a little more magic in my Dreamland.

And saying that reminds me that, two years ago today, I was sitting in the Fairy Wood in Roquetaillade making A Wish. A Wish that came true. A Wish that brought me to this very place. So I guess if I want a little more magic in my Universe, I’d better get my grumpy ass outside amongst the trees on this most auspicious of wishous days, find myself another opening into otherness, and Get Wishin’.