Hallowe'en

A couple of weeks ago Eloise was introduced to the concept of fancy dress when one of her little chums had a birthday party with a Hawaiian theme.

It was a trial attempting to get across the concept of fancy dress parties. Not that she's doesn't like dressing up and all that, but the mental leap to dressing up as a particular thing and everybody doing it and the whole turning up with normal clothes when everybody else is... you've got to love peer pressure by proxy haven't you.

Anyway this weekend, you may have noticed, if it hasn't been banned where you live - which of course it should - was Hallowe'en and fancy dress once again was in order.

We were invited to a friend's house for a party, which neatly got us out of the potentially execrable school disco.

This meant shopping for Hallowe'en stuff. I'm sure you can imagine the ructions.

Nicole had procured some skeleton costumes for herself and me, easy peasy. Eloise had decided to go as a witch, A Good Witch. A Pink Good Witch. Her requirements were certainly atomic and testable.

And unmeetable.

Still in the end it was all good, and a she got a pink wig and a red hat and a red cape. There was lots of kids at the party, all older than her but she held her own excellently. We were treated to the spectacle of grown women facebooking each other on their iphones.

But the garden graveyard, huge spider-webs and other assorted paraphernalia with which the house was bedecked were very impressive.

The next day rather than trick-or-treating Jessica's parents had a ToT station at the front of their house. We hung out there for a while, admiring the enormous pumpkin.

Next year we'll cover off Hallowe'en from the philosophical and historical perspectives, I expect.