31st October

The cats come out

The bats come out

The pumpkins come out, too

The treats come out

The ghosts come out

It's Halloween.........BOO!

Apologies. but I can't remember where this illustration comes from. - One of my books for sure.

All Hallows Eve, the evening before All Saints Day or Halloween as it's more usually called is now associated with pumpkins, and dressing up but it is a day that was for centuries full of  mysteries and superstition.

The Night of the Dead - the most unpredictable night of the year - when festivals from many cultures collide.

On Hallowe'en the old ghosts come

About us- and they speak to some

(Anon)

The traditional beliefs of  Halloween are connected with rituals for Samhain, the Celtic festival that was celebrated in Ireland and Scotland and by modern pagans. Samhain was one of the four Celtic festivals known as quarter days. The meaning of the word in old Irish is 'summers end'. Celts considered sundown as the start of a day, which is why although Samhain is November 1st, it would have been celebrated at sundown on the 31st. It was their new year and fires would have been lit on the hilltops to drive out the evil of  the last year and welcome in the new. 

Later festivities would have been influenced by the Christian feasts of All Saints on the 1st and All Souls on November 2nd, when the dead are remembered in prayers.

For on Hallowmas Eve the Nighthag shall ride,

And all her nine-fold sweeping by her side 

(Waverley by Sir Walter Scott published in 1814) 

 In the past it was a night for staying by the fire, out of harms way, and telling fortunes.

Fortune telling was done by throwing a hazelnut into the fire and seeing how it burned, or by peeling an apple and looking for the shape of the peel. These were ways of foretelling a birth or death in the family, the success of a marriage or the initials of a future husband.

In some parts of the country the 31st of October was known  as Mischief Night when mummers  would blacken their faces and knock on doors asking for cash. So although we think the trick or treat idea for Halloween came here from the USA, along with pumpkins, during the last 25 years, it's not completely  new............... before pumpkins,  faces would have been carved from swedes, turnips or mangle wurzels.

Apologies for not replying to comments some days - so many good books to read is my poor excuse!

Back Tomorrow . A-Z posts start - not sure how long I can keep it up as I've only got plans for about half a dozen out of 26 so far - oh dear.

Halfway to Halloween

Time to add my Halloween bits to the top of the bookshelves. Pumpkins, bats and battery lights.

 I've made more space for my seasonal displays as I picked up a small nest of 3 pine side tables from the nearest second-hand furniture place. The tiniest table fitted into the small space between bookshelves where the plugs are and I've moved my radio and lamp there.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

October in My Bit of Suffolk

The bedroom/shower room were sorted just in time for me to unseal the cupboard and find the Halloween bits to add to the October display shelf.

The cats come out

The bats come out

The pumpkins come out, too

The treats come out

The ghosts come out

It's Halloween.........BOO!

********************************

New heating oil tank, new en-suite, new flooring for en-suite and bedroom...........That's a chunk of my down-sizing savings gone in one month.

There will be another bill later when they put the outside door into the old en-suite to turn it into a freezer/store room next month and when I buy 800 litres of heating oil. Although the extra government 'help with heating costs' payment will help towards that.

I ought to do No Spend November...................but I try it every year (it's even there in the Labels) - and never succeed. It isn't meant to be absolutely NO spend - food needs buying, bills need paying and direct debits happen - but spending on as few days as possible and no extras. Although my 'rules' say spending on Christmas is allowed so as not to leave all the Christmas present shopping worries until December. Maybe I won't even bother to try this year.

But away from big expenses it's been a lovely month with mild and mostly fine weather and I've done all sorts of things including 

• Going to Eldest Granddaughter's 6th birthday party. Visited her again in half term and seen the nearest two grandchildren a couple of times. 
• I started cutting the horrible Yew hedge out the front until the wire pulled out of the connection on the hedge cutter so it's now at Brother-in-Laws house awaiting a bit of re-wiring.  
• Joined a new free course of exercise and wellbeing for over 60's. 
• Helped in the kitchen with the Soup and Puds fundraiser at WI.(61 people booked in, they get a soft drink,  a choice of 3 home made soups with a bread roll, followed by a choice of 9 home made deserts followed by tea/coffee all for £8. Thank heavens Bacton village hall has a high speed hot steam dishwasher!)
• 
  

• 

  Right ready for 61 visitors

  
  
• Drove down the A12 to the Big charity book sale
• Been to several car-boot sales
• Re-organised some furniture and cleared out a bag of things for the charity shop

All was going well until the boiler refused to switch on at the weekend -  Heating engineer needed AGAIN.  Think this boiler is rubbish, and it's not even very old, because in the 18 months I've been here it's had problems 5 times.

November looks to be a good month, plenty to keep me occupied - Books to read, more NCIS to watch, Firework night, more of the exercise/wellbeing  group, 2 WI meetings, there's a couple of coffee mornings and craft sales to visit and then Christmas Fayres start at the end of the month.......................and I've found two events with free coffee and cake..........I'll be there!

Back Soon

Sue

First Weekend of November

Life at the bungalow this week................

Last Saturday  I noticed the Rugby Union Autumn Internationals 🏉 were on Amazon Prime at weekends through November. Then...Yippe dippee do ...Tennis 🎾 was on there too this week. I was having a couple of months of paying for Prime for the free delivery around Christmas so very good timing.The only problem being that every time I watched a Brit playing in Paris......they lost!.

 I put my candlelit Pumpkin 🎃 out last Sunday as it got dark and the children next door were the first round then about 30 more, usually with parents. When the sweets ran out, the pumpkin came in and no one else knocked. I've no idea what the children thought as I opened the door wearing the witches hat  and asking"who's that knocking on the witches door!" and waving my broom stick at them before doling out the sweets and wishing them a fun evening.

Visitors can now use the toilet🚽 in the bathroom without having to sing! because weeks ago I tried to fit a bolt to the bathroom door but couldn't because of the shape of the architrave, so I got a hook and eye closure then  got in a muddle with the screws not going in far enough. BiL was having a quiet week so came to the rescue and sorted it and also brought a stake for the pear tree. It was lunch time so I "had" to treat him to Pensioner discount Fish and Chips again !

 On a foggy and chilly morning I had a trip out for church visits for the blog. On the way home I stopped at the Corn Crafts shop where I went last year when looking for a corn dolly. Last year I found some things for Christmas gifts, this year..........nothing found and nothing needed and I didn't even stay for coffee and cake 😇 

Having decided to make the glace/jewel  Christmas cakes  for the hampers, I started to wonder what I can put them in to gift. I trailed around all possible shops in Stowmarket looking for an empty, small Christmas cake sized tin with no luck. I looked online with no luck (except for between £7 and £28 each - much too much). So looks like a new plan will be needed - a cake board, foil and cellophane maybe or foil and a cardboard cake box. I'll work it out.

 

 

 Purple Alstromeria are my flowers on the table (window-sill)  this week  because I went to Aldi where they are cheap enough for me not to think twice. (So much for my flowers every week plan when I downsized. The price of a big bunch makes me gulp and decide I'd rather spend on a book!)

 

This week I'm grateful for

• Making a decision that was right for me
• Really good library books 
• Watching some new-to-me people playing tennis 
• Some sunny days for garden clearing
  

Hope you all have a good weekend wherever and what ever you are up to. I know the things I'm Not doing but not so sure about what I am doing but I will be back Monday all being well.

Sue

Halloween Pumpkins

First of all - thank you to everyone for comments about the church visit.

Then apologies, I know it's  a couple of days early for a Halloween post  but  I don't post on Sundays and tomorrow is my end of the month frugal bits post but  I've added my Halloween things to the seasonal display shelf for a few days. Bats, pumpkin  lights and the ceramic pumpkin.

For a few years.... when I was around 10 years old .....we had a piano. Someone gave me a beginners teach yourself piano book and I learned to play a little tune called Halloween Pumpkins. It started "Halloween Pumpkins are blinking, their candle lights are twinkling..............." can't remember any more!. Even though I could play the tune it wasn't because I'd learned to read music. Try as I might my brain wouldn't compute between the page and the notes on the piano so it was just learned off by heart with the names of the notes stuck on the keys. 

No idea what happened to the piano.

Last time I had a hair cut Kirsty, my hairdresser, who lives just up the road  told me that children around the village are keen on Halloween Trick or Treating so I'd better be prepared.

The origin of trick-or-treat is thought to be related to the Christian practice of Soul-Caking which was held on All Soul's Day on November 2nd. It's written about in the C17 but thought to be much older. Soul caking involved children going around the village asking for cakes in return for praying for the souls of departed loved ones. Soul-Caking often took place after the All Souls Day carnival or parade so the participants would be wearing costumes.

 I've bought a bag of sweets to hand out and carved my very small bargain Aldi 59p pumpkin for outside the front door and will fix up my Halloween banner which came from a car-boot sale years ago. (Probably got it to give to Eldest Granddaughter but they moved to almost the end of a close so no one would see it outside now).

 There's the boot-sale buys of the  witches hat to put on when I open the door and the witches broom to shoo away the children!! I kept looking for a witches mask at boot sales but no luck. Some would say I don't need one!

I'm ready!

 Back Tomorrow

Sue

Trick or Treat

 

 Trick or treat ? Why? 

According to the book Ceremonies of The Seasons.........................

The origin of trick-or-treat is thought to be related to the Christian practice of Soul-Caking which was held on All Soul's Day on November 2nd. It's written about in the C17 but thought to be much older. Soul caking involved children going around the village asking for cakes in return for praying for the souls of departed loved ones. Soul-Caking often took place after the All Souls Day carnival or parade so the participants would be wearing costumes.

The only time we lived in a place suitable for Trick or Treating - the tradition hadn't yet traveled back here from the USA and since then I've lived in out of the way houses and had no small callers in fancy dress. This year I guess even fewer children will be out.

Many cultures around the world have festivals or traditions celebrated with The Eve of All Saints Day or Halloween  or the Night of the Dead, including Dias de Los Muertos in Mexico and Cheung Yeung in China

 

                                                       On Hallowe'en the old ghosts come 

                                                          About us- and they speak to some

(Anon)

The history of  Halloween goes right back to rituals performed for Samhain, the Celtic festival celebrated in Ireland and Scotland. Samhain was one of the four Celtic festivals known as quarter days. The meaning of the word in old Irish is 'summers end'. The end of the light half of the year. Celts considered sundown as the start of a day, which is why although Samhain is November 1st, it would have been celebrated at sundown on the 31st. It was their new year and fires would have been lit on the hilltops to drive out the evil of  the last year and welcome in the new. Then later came the Christian feasts of All Saints on the 1st and All Souls on November 2nd, when the dead are remembered in prayers.

In the past it was a night for staying by the fire, out of harms way, and telling fortunes............sounds OK to me. Perhaps at midnight I will peel an apple all in one piece, throw the peel over my shoulder and see what letter it makes - that will be the initial of my next lover.......!!!  

 

Have a lovely weekend. I'm back Monday IF I have anything to write about - at the moment my mind is blank.

 

Sue

The Last Day of October..............

...............Financial Ins and Outs..................and pumpkin pictures.

All Hallows Eve or Halloween as we say nowadays, a night of pumpkins and ghosts, witches and spooks. It's Samhain if you follow the Old Ways and The Night of the Dead - the most unpredictable night of the year - so if you are out and about with children trick or treating - take care!

This time last year I wrote about the year we grew giant  pumpkins at the smallholding. 

This photo that shows how big they were.....Col sitting on the biggest of all the giants.

This is the photo I put on the blog last year with all five giant pumpkins, taken the year before Colin was diagnosed with Lymphoma. It was much easier growing normal sized ones, they didn't need shifting with tractor and trailer!

A load of normal sized pumpkins from several years before the photo above when we still had a grey Fergie tractor and  older trailer

 Anyway............back to this year and October whizzed by as all months seem to do nowadays. There was some pretty grotty weather on several days, but luckily the weekend when Eldest Daughter and Jacob were staying was perfect for getting out and about.
I got a few outside jobs done including cleaning the greenhouse glass, inside and outside. Weeding the asparagus bed, cutting back the  holly hocks and Alstromeria in the Cutting garden (and at last after three tries the Alstromeria (Peruvian lilies) have taken hold and spread). Unfortunately they are all the same colour - pink - unlike the patch I grew for selling at the smallholding which were mixed oranges and shades of red. I've never seen similar plants for sale since then.

In October there was the usual income....... County Council Spouses pension, bits of interest on savings, repayments from family  plus £10 for books sent to Ziffit

The expenses during the month included

• All the usual things - food for me and the cat, diesel for the car, phones and charity direct debits
• Chimney sweep £60 - and he put the new fire bricks inside the wood burner for me.
• I went slightly mad and bought clothes (new and secondhand) and boots. The boots were from Hotter and were a special offer reduced by a few pounds......and how annoying is it that on the day after I ordered them another email popped up with a "extra 10% off on top of the previous reduced price - this weekend only"! Now I've got one pair of boots and one pair of shoes for winter it should make them last longer.......is that how it works?
• Bought some new even lower energy candle bulbs for my living room lights after one went pop.
• Treated the family to lunch out - my favourite thing to do when we are all together.
• Son's Birthday present
• A sheepskin cover for my bike seat
• New jars and lids for more hamper presents
• My regular once-a-month-pick-up-prescription-on -the-same-day-as-the-pensioners-fish-and- chip-cheap-lunch treat for £3.50
• Septic tank emptying - £99 this year.
• Paying for the labour for gate fixing.(Gate pictures to follow)

Still Clearing Out...................
Lots of old plastic clothes hangers into the bin
Old pair of slip on sandals into bin
Emptied out some various bottles of spray things that were in the greenhouse, left here by Mrs F and put bottles into recycling.
Craft bits to charity shop
Odd children's books and few toys ditto
Some reference books that I've not needed to charity shop


Frugal things?
Hardly any boot sales due to wet weather!
Last of the tomatoes and final cucumber during the first week of October
Using breadmaker for bread and malt loaf
Made a hanger for my "fishing float" using cheap jute string
Mixing milk with water.
A few  pears from the garden
Cheap apples from boot sale.
Gift of a book from publishers


At one time there was a blog thing of No-Spend November which I've tried but something always happens to put the kibosh on it so this November I'll not bother.
There are no regular bills due but I'd better get 500 litres of heating oil and there are Christmas things to organise. I try to spread the buying through the year but November and December are the spendiest months.

Thanks to everyone for comments yesterday - there were so many on what I thought was a dull post about LPG!
Replying here

• As Colin was in and out of hospital when we moved here, it was left up to me to choose and organise the cooker. When I found one that fitted in exactly - so saving me having to think about a  cupboard of some sort to fill the space. I decided to ignore the cost and get the double oven range! I didn't regret it!
• The cooker stands in what was once the fireplace in the old part of the house. Although the wood beam isn't the original as that was lower and the previous owners cut it out and put a new beam above. The old beam is now the mantel shelf  in the living room.
• The LPG cylinders last longer than they used to  because of having the bread maker and my lack of enthusiasm for cooking much for myself. I think I use  3 a year now.
• I've been changing over cylinders for years, although not shifting the 45kg ones that we had everywhere before here!
• The grill is the top right door and bottom left is a drawer. I don't use the grill much because I hate washing it up as it's so large.
• I do try and reply to comments but some days just don't have time and that's the same reason for not leaving comments on every blog I read which would be just as difficult - actually impossible as it would leave no time for writing my blog! 
• The hob has four normal burners - 1 large, 2 medium and 1 small  plus a double wok burner. Which is really good for stirfries.
• The Nan's Kitchen sign was a lovely Mothers Day present from Son and DiL last year

Back Tomorrow
Sue

 

Double Standards?

You know I don't like tat

All that stuff that travels in 10,000 trucks along the A14 from Felixstowe docks to the shops

The stuff that people moan about because it's filling the shelves long  before Halloween and Christmas

The stuff that people buy and show on their blogs while I think HA! rather not waste my money on that, thank you.

Well I've changed my mind

 Thank goodness they do buy that tat new

Because then a couple of years later they sell it 

And I can spend all of 50p on tat to brighten up my October mantel-shelf

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

 (Edited in to say - apologies - this post sounds so mean and nasty - think I must have been in a bad mood when I wrote it a couple of weeks ago)


Back Tomorrow
Sue

All Hallows Eve and Samhain

The Eve of All Saints Day or Halloween as it's more usually called is now associated with pumpkins, and dressing up but it is a day that has for centuries been shrouded in mysteries and superstition.
The Night of the Dead - the most unpredictable night of the year - when festivals from many cultures collide.

On Hallowe'en the old ghosts come

About us- and they speak to some

(Anon)

The traditional beliefs of  Halloween are connected with rituals performed for Samhain, the Celtic festival celebrated in Ireland and Scotland. Samhain was one of the four Celtic festivals known as quarter days. The meaning of the word in old Irish is 'summers end'. Celts considered sundown as the start of a day, which is why although Samhain is November 1st, it would have been celebrated at sundown on the 31st. It was their new year and fires would have been lit on the hilltops to drive out the evil of  the last year and welcome in the new. Later festivities would have been influenced by the Christian feasts of All Saints on the 1st and All Souls on November 2nd, when the dead are remembered in prayers.

For on Hallowmas Eve the Nighthag shall ride,

And all her nine-fold sweeping by her side 

(Waverley by Sir Walter Scott published in 1814) 

 In the past it was a night for staying by the fire, out of harms way, and telling fortunes.

Fortune telling was done by throwing a hazelnut into the fire and seeing how it burned, or by peeling an apple and looking for the shape of the peel. These were ways of foretelling a birth or death in the family, the success of a marriage or the initials of a future husband.

In some parts of the country the 31st of October was known  as Mischief Night when mummers  would blacken their faces and knock on doors asking for cash. So although we think the trick or treat idea for Halloween came here from the USA, along with pumpkins, during the last 25 years, it's not completely  new............... before pumpkins,  faces would have been carved from swedes, turnips or mangle wurzels.

Years ago at the smallholding pumpkins were always one of the ways we made a bit of money through the  month of October when most other crops had finished. I searched the old blog and found the picture from 2014 - the year when we were given some seeds for giant pumpkins. We sold all these and also £75 worth of normal sized pumpkins. It was always hard work planting the small pumpkin plants out on the field in the late spring but a very useful income in late Autumn, as it is for many bigger farmers.

 

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Halloween Mantel-shelf

5 sparkly bats from the packaging place a couple of weeks ago and a ceramic pumpkin from a charity shop several years ago are the additions to the mantle- piece for Halloween.

If you are somewhere that celebrates it in rather more exuberant style - stay safe. And if you are trying to avoid all the hassles, keep the lights off and pretend there's no one at home!
We were expecting trick or treat-ers in Ipswich last year and never saw a soul, but there are two little girls next door but one to us in the lane so perhaps they might be round (actually T would hate me saying little as she's 11 now!)

Back Tomorrow
Sue