Ghost bus!!!!!!

As everyone knows, Halloween is fast approaching and in Dublin the excitement is mounting! I feel a bit silly confessing this but Bepe and I actually bought and carved a pumpkin last night and now it is adorning the outside window of our apartment. So if you're on Bachelor's Walk and you up to see a particularly scary pumpkin grimacing down at you, that's ours. I designed it! I'm disproportionately proud, but I'd like to think that my masters in Gothic literature is finally paying some dividends :-)

Purists will tell you that the real traditional lantern in Ireland is not made from a pumpkin but from a turnip. But as I've had a lot of experience chopping up turnips (they're widely eaten where I come from) I wouldn't relish the thought of trying to hack one of those hard things into a viable lantern.

Our boss at work has had a cool idea and has organised for us all to go on Dublin's Ghost Bus (in three shifts, of course, or the restaurant wouldn't open). It's going to be fantastic and very Halloweeny because they take you to all the scariest, most atmospheric places in the city. They have keys to all the historic cemetaries! I can't wait.

Halloween isn't even upon us and already my Mom is worrying at me about Xmas. I don't know how I'm going to tell her that there's no way I'll be able to get home. I can't leave work and I don't really feeling like going, anyway. Somehow it seems that I'm ready to have my first proper Christmas as an adult...