Hallowe’en

Hands up everyone who loves fancy dress.

Jim and I hosted a fancy dress party in aid of Hallowe’en this week. Jim is not a huge fan of fancy dress, but I LOVE it and spend ages planning and creating my costume. This time it was surprisingly easy and yet very effective: I went as ‘The Dance of Death’. (I realise I just look like any old dragged-up witch above, but I borrowed the hat from someone else). The story is this: I promised a friend (I think it was Clancy) that I would go in drag to the next fancy dress party I attended, and that I would go as a ballerina. This was the first fancy dress party since the Superheroes Party for my birthday, so I had to find a way to combine the two: ‘The Dance of Death’ was born. Nobody got it, but I did get to wear a tutu.

Just out of shot are some ballet-style ribbons going up my legs to make it more apparent as to what exactly it was all about. A night of drunken goings-on ensued in which I discovered the following:

• white wine spritzers with sugarcane spirits are thoroughly enjoyable and also quite deadly
• anal sex is best discussed with people who are at least half as drunk as you are
• I am embarrassed about being very clever
• Jim is the man, and I am the woman. How did that happen?
• fake blood is never dry, even if you think it is. Washing your hands does more damage than leaving them be
• and nothing says ‘party’ like ‘I am what I am’. Until you hit the fifth repeat.

Photos from the night can be found in the usual place, and the tutu lives on: Andrew may think I have forgotten but he did promise that he would continue the tradition and wear one to the next fancy dress party he has. I’m looking forward to the photos from that; perhaps a facebook group is in order…Saturday night was, thankfully, far less boozy as we took our seats for the Bath Male Choir and an evening of harmonies and hymns. I am always in two minds about hymns: I don’t believe in the sentiment, but they do sound lovely. Stephen had been at our party – the scarecrow in the photos – and from (limited) memory was also pretty far gone. However, there he was up on stage singing his heart out as though he hadn’t been drinking at all. I was very impressed. I was also in bed at a reasonable hour, which was very welcome. Plus, when we left, we managed to catch some late fireworks across the city which made my night: Guy Fawkes night is my favourite night of the year!In other news, I bought the coat! However, now I am even more convinced that it just isn’t meant to be: it still hasn’t arrived. After I wrote about it I decided that I was going to buy it but, wouldn’t you know it, they had every size but mine. So, online shopping it was: two days waiting for the free delivery and I would have it by last weekend. Except I didn’t. By Thursday I had been waiting a week, so I rang them up and tore a strip off the poor chump who answered. She pointed out quite politely that ‘now we’ve entered the Christmas period there is a ten-day delivery period’, but that my coat was on the van and due for delivery that day. Without questioning how they could call the end of October ‘the Christmas period’, I hung up. Thursday night and still no coat. Friday I rang them again and the coat was still on the van. It’s now Sunday night and STILL NO COAT! I feel an iPod situation coming on…