Happy Halloween!

When Halloween arrives, you know it's Autumn. The clocks have gone back, it's dark when you get out of work, and for me there's an extra excitement to getting home and shutting the curtains on the cold dark evenings.

Our Halloween began a few days ago, with a visit to one of our favourite attractions, the Babbacombe Model Village.  Spooky illuminations and scary scenes had been set up especially for the occasion, and the residents of the tiny town were really getting into the spirit.  At the end of one road, the Addams Family house has popped up, whilst on the village green, locals have gathered to witness the burning of the Wicker Man.  Elsewhere in the town, it's a standard Hallows Eve, the brilliant illuminations of the city centre every bit the equal of London or New York, with the added twist of being under attack by giant spiders.  Truly, a spooky little city.

The Addams Family house

Burning the Wicker Man

Merrivale city centre

Attack of the giant spiders!

Spooky happenings in the abbey ruins

For Halloween proper, Lizzie and I were up in Surrey, and ventured to Secretts garden centre where they have put on their own pumpkin pick.  A tractor trailer ride is the only way to get to the site, taking us through many muddy fields completely unsuitable for walking.  Up on the higher land, the pumpkins have grown in abundance, and range in size from the tiny to the enormous.  Signs around the park explain that, due to the poor summer weather, many of the pumpkins have not turned orange, but this just adds an air of uniqueness for me as we walk off with one orange (ish) pumpkin, and one very definitely green fruit.

Fields of pumpkins

Lizzie's pumpkin

A successful harvest!

To the evening, and amongst the spooky snacks we've bought for the day, two sugar mouse cookies from Lizzie's mum!  Our afternoon has been spent carving our beautiful pumpkins, both of us coming up with sinister designs. This is such a fun activity, not just because of the creepy characters you get to meet, but also because of the delicious pumpkin soup you get to make from their scooped-out insides.  On a cold, wet, windy evening, this is a warming treat.  As for our new friends, they will get pride of place at the front gate, warding off evil spirits and hopefully keeping our house safe for the night.

Sugar mouse cookies

Halloween treats

Our handsome "jacko-lanterns"

Who's the prettiest?

Warming pumpkin soup

This blog would like to wish everybody a fun and spooky Halloween!

Bond is Back

We're all going Bond-crazy as the newest addition to the 007 collection hits cinemas up and down the country!  I for one am seriously excited about the latest film, which has reviewed fantastically well and has what must be the most "Bondy" theme song for many years.  No I haven't seen Skyfall yet, but I'm already envisioning a powerful and explosive introduction, melting into the atmospheric piano tones of Adele's new hit.  It sounds straight out of the Bond tradition.  Check out this Skyfall review, it will really whet your appetite.

It has always been said that a person's favourite James Bond is usually the one he or she grew up with.  My first Bond experience came at the Alexandra cinema in Newton Abbot, the beautiful gem of a building below.  I was 11 or 12 and off with a friend to watch Tomorrow Never Dies, the second of the Peirce Brosnan series in which an out-of-control media mogul tries to create an enormous war in order to boost his news sales.  Cue a British secret agent...

Newton Abbot's Alexandra cinema

I was hooked.  I wanted to see more Bond films, and a few weeks later Dr. No screened on the television.  I remember remarking that  "some old guy" was playing 007 when I watched it - I didn't realsie at the time that this old guy was, of course, Sean Connery.  Film after film them flooded into my life (aided by the generous time ITV dedicated to Bond Season), and before I knew it I had collected every movie on video.  The spines of their cases formed a picture and sat proudly on my shelf until the invention of the DVD player.  Now, perhaps it's time to invest in a new collection, and revisit these classics.
 
There hasn't been a bad Bond in my opinion.  Each actor has broguht something new and different to the franchise, and each is very much a product of his time.  Sophisticated 1960s Connery and Lazenby, 70s joker-Bond Roger Moore, powerful 80s agent Dalton, slick and suave 90s man Brosnan, gritty Daniel Craig, perfect for our current age.  So do I have a favourite?  It's impossible to pick one Bond, but here are the five films that most stick in my mind when I think of 007.  The original British movie posters are just terrific, don't you think?

 

I hope that Skyfall lives up to these classics, and I'm sure it will.  I just can't wait to get in front of the big screen for it, to welcome the secret agent back into my life once again!

 

Book Review: The Beautiful and Damned (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel presents a haunting portrayal of New York's wealthy but rootless generation emerging out of the First World War.  Anthony Patch, the grandson of tycoon millionaire Adam Patch, lives only in the pursuit of wealth and pleasure.  On one of his many social events, he meets the selfish and supremely beautiful Gloria Gilbert, the cousin of a close friend.  Gloria is simultaneously wise and naive; at times she exhibits almost child-like behaviour, but her string of previous relationships hints at a girl with a jaded outlook on the world.

As the years turn, so beauty fades and so the incompatibilities in Anthony and Gloria's relationship become more and more exposed.  Only when under the influence of liquor, at their increasingly common parties, are Anthony and Gloria happy, but even this emotion can only be sustained for so long, as finances dry up, friendships fade, and marriage reaches breaking-point.  Then, when old Adam Patch dies, his fortune becomes the sole ambition of their sordid and empty marriage.

The Beautiful and Damned is a moody and atmospheric portrayal of early Twentieth Century New York and a nation awakening from its slumber to find its place as an emerging superpower.  Said to be influenced by Fitzgerald's own torrid marriage, the novel charts the destructive obsession with wealth and decadence that gripped a unique class of people - a class with no direction, no identity, no ambition and, ultimately, no hope.

The Beautiful and Damned

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

First published in March 1922 by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, USA.