Hallowe'en Redux

Nov 1, 2005 · 3 minute read

It’s Hallowe’en! So the only thing to do is pack up in a car, drive off to a remote farm, and get chased around a corn field by people wielding chainsaws!

Aha. Well, okay, it was a corn maze, and the chainsaw motors had no blades attached, but you get the general idea. Sadly, as we've watched far too many horror films, the haunted corn maze didn't generate too many scares for us; the day was saved by a group of teenage girls who screamed their way around the maze. Hurrah!

Following on from that little adventure, Laura and Collin had a 'pot luck' alternative to Franklin Street back at their house. A quiet, relaxed getaway from the rustle and bustle. We even made cookies with spooky decorations (Batman sprinkles, admittedly, so perhaps only scary to an infant).

(Incidentally, the question 'so, Ian, what type of music do you like?' seems to be a signal to my brain to forget every single song I've ever heard, so my answers last night were broken and incomplete. And my namedropping of "oh, yes, when I interviewed The Go! Team a few months ago…" was shameless indeed. But! I did find out that Christa was at the Godspeed You! Black Emperor concert back in 2003. Always odd to discover that you were in the same room with somebody several years before you knew them)

The highlight of the evening had to be the arrival of the Bush Cheerleading Squad. Yes! Laura! Condi! And Dick! Complete with cheers (I don't think any of us will get "HEY DICK! SHAKE YOUR THANG! out of our heads soon. Even if we stick knitting needles in our ears). We were treated to a quick rehearsal before they went out into the night.

And soon, it was time for me to head off with Joe and Leigh for a walk down Franklin Street. A walk which was slightly tarnished by seeing a man being punched by another before we got to the police security cordon. It coloured the evening somewhat; for some reason, it seemed that the student population, although present in mass numbers, was down somewhat, and there was a considerable amount of people not in fancy dress (okay, so I can't cast aspersions on that, seeing as how my first Hallowe'en in Chapel Hill saw me going as 'an Englishman in contemporary dress'). But, lots of creativity: sets of dominoes, a toolbox (with individual people playing different tools), somebody all-blacked out and pretending to be a person from an iPod advert, plus a plentiful amount of bumblebees, french maids, angels, fallen angels, and at the end of the scale, people going around in their knickers.

We didn't stay too long; Joe had to get up early in the morning, and, well, there's only so many times you can walk up and down a street (foolishly, I had left my passport back at Laura's, so we couldn't go into a bar). Back and to bed, then, for another fun Hallowe'en in Chapel Hill.