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Hallowe'en
Went round to my sister's for Hallowe'en yesterday. Yes, yesterday; arcane Scottish tradition has it that if the 31st is a Sunday, Hallowe'en is the Saturday. As far as I know, All Saints' Day is still tomorrow, though.
Anyway, my neice was wearing a pretty cool vampire dress, and my nephew was wearing his Luigi hat and a moustache. I, as the most childish adult in the family, felt obliged to dress up as well, and reassembled my Definitely Not The Nac Mac Feegle outfit from DiscCon 2008, on the grounds that my neice would now know what it was about, since she's read the first three Tiffany books[1]
And ... nobody came. Sorry, tell a lie, one friend of the family came. And then they wouldn't go out if no-one else was doing it, so another friend of the family came to deliver the bags of sweets. But my sister's neighbourhood, which is full of kids, was berift of guisers, even more so than last year.
(It did occur to us that maybe everyone else had forgotten about this arcane Scottish tradition. But I haven't seen anyone out tonight either. Well, no, when we visited my aunt this evening, there was one woman dragging a girl dressed as a pumpkin behind her and muttering "Well, we weren't told it was yesterday, were we?" But that was it.)
[1]For non-Discworld fans, the Nac Mac Feegle are inch-high blue Scottish stereotypes ("pictsies"). The costume, based on a scene in the book where they take control of a scarecrow to interact with "bigjobs", comprised an old shirt and trousers, a broad brimmed hat, clompy boots, gloves, dark glasses and a false beard. The sleeves were stuffed with newspaper for the "scarecrow" effect, meaning one hand was free to operate "Daft Wullie", a small Grover puppet which Mum had embellished with a kilt and red hair and beard, who would clamber out of the shirt to see what was going on.
Anyway, my neice was wearing a pretty cool vampire dress, and my nephew was wearing his Luigi hat and a moustache. I, as the most childish adult in the family, felt obliged to dress up as well, and reassembled my Definitely Not The Nac Mac Feegle outfit from DiscCon 2008, on the grounds that my neice would now know what it was about, since she's read the first three Tiffany books[1]
And ... nobody came. Sorry, tell a lie, one friend of the family came. And then they wouldn't go out if no-one else was doing it, so another friend of the family came to deliver the bags of sweets. But my sister's neighbourhood, which is full of kids, was berift of guisers, even more so than last year.
(It did occur to us that maybe everyone else had forgotten about this arcane Scottish tradition. But I haven't seen anyone out tonight either. Well, no, when we visited my aunt this evening, there was one woman dragging a girl dressed as a pumpkin behind her and muttering "Well, we weren't told it was yesterday, were we?" But that was it.)
[1]For non-Discworld fans, the Nac Mac Feegle are inch-high blue Scottish stereotypes ("pictsies"). The costume, based on a scene in the book where they take control of a scarecrow to interact with "bigjobs", comprised an old shirt and trousers, a broad brimmed hat, clompy boots, gloves, dark glasses and a false beard. The sleeves were stuffed with newspaper for the "scarecrow" effect, meaning one hand was free to operate "Daft Wullie", a small Grover puppet which Mum had embellished with a kilt and red hair and beard, who would clamber out of the shirt to see what was going on.