Tree beat music

Forget listening to the bands at the local music festival. We all end up round this tree. Yes, I know it looks like Monster's dad is up there to escape the hoards below, but he was just demonstrating a climbing technique when you have no low branches to get you started. Honest. Anyway, it worked, and a party in the tree time was soon had by all.

Not quite the effect intended

Peeple are coming round! For my Evening's Entertainment in the spirit of our Great Aunt Laura! It is so exciting. I will candle-light the house. Or at least the bits of it we own and which haven't fallen in.

I am so determined to offer up my theatrical Victoriana, that I even clean off the flotsam that has washed up on the fireplace mantle. Books, final demands, rubber rats, tinfoil, more Squirrel stones, that type of wreckage. On my delightfully naked surface I then collect together an assortment of candlesticks turned out from every cupboard in the house.

I proudly light the candles, and think the effect is so very chi-chi I might sell photographs of my Period Party Decor to Tatler.

Dig agrees. But he adds the mantelpiece now so looks like an altar, it has brought about in him a strange anti-social urge to sacrifice the postman.

At last we can lay it to rest

Grit's misery whinge-fest is almost complete.

Only one plastic pumpkin head, one half-chewed gingerbread house daubed with the special hell that is black icing, and 2,456 items of cheap candy to dispose of in the trash, and I can be done and dusted until next year.

But first, the party. Better get it over with. In a process which feels not unlike clubbing baby seals or beating up the Labrador, Squirrel makes me prepare by dressing me up. She says we must decide between the horns...


or the bats.

When they have chosen, and humiliated me better than I can do for myself, I get my own back. I say now you have chosen my lovely costume, if you want to go to this party, you're walking. It's a two-hour hike, over the mountain, past the glorious concrete factory, through the splendid building site, and round the amazing fish farms, so get your boots on.




Squirrel retaliates by insisting that I wear my horns of shame. I get one over on her by smiling all the way.



And then we arrive! Admittedly not before I have had a little grizzle about how I would be happier if Hallowe'en were about poetic slants of shadows, shades of light, strange unbidden noises, gentle curling leaves, and familiar nature, taking us by surprise. Not blood and splatter, for which there is no need. No one takes any notice of me.

There's more delight to be had with a spooky theme beach party alongside a dozen home ed kids than with ole mama misery guts.








See? There was a three-line whip on the costumes, and there was no escape.


But I get a little of my wish too, because when it's done, we have to walk a while to catch a ferry: up the hill, down to the bay, in the quiet and the dark, through the humid jungle night.

The awful preparations begin

Hallowe'en is coming.

Did you know that?

If you live in America, no doubt you do. Admit it, you have been on tenterhooks, waiting to realise this fantastic ceremony for the last 363 days. At this point, you probably need nailing down to the ground and tying up with ropes.

I have satisfactorily avoided the worst of Hallowe'en for years. When I have faced it, I have made it English, of course, so the evening has started with tea and biscuits and there hasn't been much else, apart from a little light whining. When the children have forced my hand, then I have turned it into someone else's problem.

Of course I have dabbled, but only where educationally essential, with Samhain. (Child-friendly version: ceremoniously put two plastic Early Learning Centre cows in a cold oven to mark driving cattle through fire then say that is enough. Colour in a picture of a Celt.)

But all that happy and deliberate ignorance and avoidance has come to a sad end. I have now found that I can escape this junction of time no longer.

The reason is simple. I am surrounded by Americans, and other enthusiasts of the genre. There is no way out. Now even I have horns.

The children of course are beside themselves, annoyingly thrilled at the prospect of extracting candy from the neighbours simply by turning up with a plastic bucket. (I have banned that. I am insisting on coconut shells.)

And the costumes. Godhelpme, the costumes. Today I am pressed into service, thrashing between streets and gutters of Hong Kong grovelling in the ten dollar bins like an old tramp in the park.

The purpose is all miserable, as is the experience. I am scrounging cheap factory reject clothing, so three seamstresses can scurry back to their ateliers and convert discarded nylon into a bat, witch, and some half-baked idea about a demon cat.

But I must salvage something from disaster, and simultaneously claim it is life enriching.

Now I can say with absolute certainty that today has been very good and a brilliant opportunity for our ongoing education.

The children can, for example, practice their sewing, then revisit the following ideas: Customs around the world, Changing seasons, and Why are the Americans so completely crazy for this horrible event?

(Don't ask me, I have no idea.)

The saving moment of a weary day crawling through Sheung Wan's factory rejects.
Being distracted by a stationery store.
Discovering these little gems up the backstreets of old Hong Kong
is like discovering a pot of gold at the foot of a rainbow.

Well, only if you are a stationery enthusiast, and not a Hallowe'en aficionado.

Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance

We go out and find a dancing fire dragon!

How dedicated am I!

You see, for your edification and delight, there's nothing I won't do! I'll immerse myself in Chinese culture. For you, I'll put in the leg work. I'll ride the Hong Kong ferries, walk the streets, and take the trams. I'll locate the best street festivity for the Mid Autumn Festival, and bring it right here to you!

Oh let my blog swell with pride at the photographs I can present for you!



Well, I haven't got any photographs of a dancing fire dragon. You'll just have to imagine it.

Dig has had a hand in this. He very kindly deinstalled the program I used to transfer the pictures from camera to computer and, as a little bonus, or just to make sure, secreted the camera on his desk and lost it.

But because, like me, he also goes the extra mile to be so very helpful, he has also complained about Sony Ericsson as well! Stealing his life!

While I contemplate a suitable reward for Dig, maybe kneecapping, or locking in a cupboard and starving to death, you could see a picture of this fantastic dancing fire dragony spectacle over here.

It didn't look a bit like that to me.

It looked a bit more like this.

If you want to read a story about the origins of the fire dragon, because frankly I can't be bothered to write it out now, you could also go here.

Enjoy. And take delight in how much we will do for you, dear reader, simply for your satisfaction. Say, we might bring you a Chinese moon dance next, DIY style, with mop bucket and curtain rail.

Most treasured

I am come over reflecting on all things lost, broken and soulless these days am I not?

This is wrong wrong wrong. I must remind me of those items I am attached to. I have thought of three. These I will reinvent, no matter which country I inhabit, nor which shape I am. (Although if I take the shape of something sized like a woodlouse or a hippopotamus, then these items will meet with practical difficulties regarding transportation, wearability and ingestion, obviously. I am hoping I do not inhabit these shapes in the foreseeable future.)

1. Aspirin. I have a ridiculous attachment to these little promises of good health and longevity. I stock up on them, the cheaper the better, no fancy packaging, 300mg straight in my face, non-dispersible. I am convinced that aspirin cures anything and everything. Headache? Pain from crumbling womb? Left leg severed at knee? Take an aspirin.

Caveat: If I consume eight tablets in one day, I find my head becomes detached from my body and floats about the room. Maximum, six.

2. Pointy shoes. No-one is parting me from pointy shoes, so no-one better try. Yes, I will wear other toe shapes, obviously, but my first love remains constant until the day I die. In fact I may make sure that I die wearing pointy shoes. I am game for most colours, fabrics, heights, because these are of less consequence than the fact that the toes must point. I especially like pointy shoes that crush both big toe and little toe simultaneously. This helps maintain a well-rounded state of pain (for which item 1 comes in handy). No. I do not think they make me look like a witch.

3. Shark's mug. In the recent kitchen clear-out I have rediscovered Shark's mug. It is one of those paint-your-own ceramic things she made me pay for when she was aged three and I could refuse her nothing. Anyway, it is huge, about the size of a flower bulb bowl. It is so big indeed that I need to clutch it with both hands and raise it to my face which it then completely obliterates from view. I have discovered a very great attachment to it, although I expect it will wane when I drop it in the sink. But, for now, I fill it each morning with my coffee. (Black, no sugar. And don't give me any of that instant mess or I will complain at a speed, volume and duration that most normal people would be ashamed of.)

Come to think of it, Shark's mug may actually be a flower bulb bowl. That would explain the curious lack of handles.

Now, dear and happy reader who made it this far, please broaden my horizons and tell me what object you are most attached to and would not part from, ever. (Rule: cannot be human, sticking out from a human, or have life.)

I am in disconnect

Strange. I could have sworn that lunch was composed of lemon-flavoured cold remedies, and pudding was to have my lifeless body propped up in an audience at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre to experience two hours of Cantonese Opera.

From what I can recall, Cantonese Opera has the sound equivalent of a parrot in a claw fight with a tom cat, and has the visual puzzle of two or more giant fluorescent faces hanging expressionless amongst five hundredweight of sequins.

But I may have been tripping on Strepsils. At some points the faces started spinning, while the sequins waved fake weapons then lunged at each other with sticks.

By the end I became numb. I may have floated off into some sort of cocooned out-of-body experience. From a long way away, Tiger turned to me and said now she could see the point of learning Cantonese, because then she could understand the amazing opera with the fantastic costumes, beautiful make up, and lovely singing, all of which she enjoys so very much, so please can I buy tickets for the full five hours?

Hungry ghost

Here we are, locked on Lamma Island Hong Kong with the Hungry Ghost Festival. That's something I should be able to talk about, surely? That's a real-life on-the-ground bit of learning I want to share.

Because one moment me and Squirrel are staggering home to the House on the Hill in the heavy evening heat, having bought a tasty promise of nostalgia with a lump of overpriced cheddar (which, clutched in my dripping paw at 30 degree Celsius, quickly resembles a sweaty poultice for a particularly nasty boil), and the next, we're tripping over people setting fire to sticks in the ground and shovelling apples and peanuts at the tropical undergrowth.

Now, because Grit is a savvy international woman with one foot in the West and one foot in the East (meta text: she just coincidentally looked at a picture book in Dimmock's on Chinese festivals), she immediately glances up to the sky and clocks the full moon.

Aha! she says to her little companion Squirrel, with that sort of teachery voice that makes it sound like she knows what this is all about. That proves it! Whatever strange ritual is going on here, it's something to do with the moon. And because I read the pictures in Dimmock's I can confidently/tentatively say, I think we're looking at the Chinese time of year when spirits from one world pass through to the other.

Squirrel, this is Ghost Festival, and your Hallowe'en. Depending where we live at any time of year, I could turn into a werewolf, grab a bucket for trick and treating, jump astride my broomstick, or have Mother Ghost leap up at me again waving trout.

This is good education, eh Squirrel? Cultural observation. How we people are all different and the same. Take notes, my home educated child, hungry for learning. Quit yelling. Those spirits can hear you, and now the veil is thin. Those scrawny starved hands might scrabble out the ground to reach you and grab you down to Hell. Say what? you're not going to sleep? What? Never again?

Better ease their burden, Squirrel. Give the lost wanderers something to eat. Pacify them, and make them safe in their souls. No, give me that cheese back. It just cost me a fortune. Observe. In the undergrowth. The feast is already prepared! Three delicious apples, a bag of peanuts, a mound of lychee, and a juicy soybean curd, only lacking a wok.

Me and Squirrel stare. And momentarily, because I am a fat ignorant big nosed foreign devil from an alien civilization, who only popped out for a lump of supper cheese, I'm in half a mind to pinch one of the apples and scoff it, they look so ripe and tempting. But I guess that action might place me on the wrong side of the uncrossable line again, and this time upset the dead as well as the living.

We reach safely home, not grabbed by spirits, but clutching threads of life force that I call an education. Everyone is hungry, because the shopping pioneers are late, what with the spirit watching. Shark comes out to greet us, demanding dinner. Dig says his tummy's rumbling and he hopes I bought the cheese. And Tiger. Where is she?

The forlorn and saddened Tiger has shut herself up in her bedroom with the air con, cold and yearning for what she cannot have. Home. But Tiger, you can come out now. I have brought an offering for your empty tummy. Let me lay it by your plate.