blimey, October already. we are thus truly in the realms of the business end of this year, then, what with months now measured in double digit figures. low double digit, look you see, but low all the same. for those what do all finance and business stuff, a life i am now (relatively) free of, indeed you may refer to it now being the "final" or "4th" quarter of the year. actual year, of course, and not "fiscal", which for some obscure reason works different. yes, indeed, i am sure our governments and other forms of grown ups know precisely what they are doing with that.
anyway, the business end of October (see what i did there) brings with it Halloween. no, not the film of that name, but the date it is marked. my plan was to post this on the day (or close enough), but what the heck, let's get this cleared up here and now. or on the day if that is when you read this.
every year, without fail, a whole load of people here (England, or the wider UK) decide to spout off about how ridiculous it is that "we" go ahead and "do" Halloween. fair enough view if you don't particularly care for it all. usually, though, their argument stems not from any personal contempt or disdain, but from the belief that it is "only recently" we have (for want of a better term) celebrated all things Halloween, and then only because of the proliferation of American influence on our world. neither of these arguments are true, and thus not particularly valid. depending, i suppose, on how flexible one wishes to be on "recent".
up there above these words is a picture of myself (at the back) with my rother and sister. this shall be from the late 70s or, at the latest, 1980. it cannot be 1981, for we would all have been resplendent in summer attire for the season of October in Australia (g'day). you in all likelihood do not need me to point this out, but indeed we are wearing (quite dapper) Halloween hats. doing all of that "trick or treat" stuff, and spooky things, was very much a thing before "recent", thanks.
i would presume (or suppose) the idea of Halloween somehow being an "American" thing is because of just how big a deal our friends across the pond make of it. being secular means they don't particularly do "the biggies" we do (Easter and Christmas) on a national level, and so they make a fuss over other dates, such as Halloween, their Independence Day, Thanksgiving and that Superbowl thing. indeed they even refer to Halloween as a "holiday", despite them not getting what we call a public holiday for it.
we do (sadly) have many things here which are a direct and overt influence from America. many of them are ones which we could do with getting rid of. not an exhaustive list, but the idea of having someone celebrated for incompetence in charge of government is one we would be wise to drop. then there's those calling to "defund" various things, which don't work the same as they do in America. my personal pet hate is how people now refer to "seasons" of a tv show, when for decades we managed rather fine with (correctly) calling them "series". squirty can cheese, stabbings and all sorts of things like that are matters which would probably have been left on the other side of Atlantic. if anything, though, it's them what borrowed Halloween off of us, with them (admittedly) jazzing it up a lot.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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