The end of Halloween?

The girls have been excited about Halloween all week. Mostly I thought it was for their little parties at school and nursery which they enjoyed but it turned out to be more than that. They were looking forward to Halloween itself. I have no idea why and no idea what they were expecting.

When I was a kid we dressed up and were paraded around the doors to tell jokes and collect peanuts, fruit and sweets- sometimes the odd coin. It was very much a community thing. Behind every door that we chapped lay a person we knew and kids would constantly come chapping at our door to. There was a reason to get excited about this. Not now though.

Where I live I have lived for about 8 years, my wife for 13 years. Not once has anyone come guising at our door. I cannot remember a single time and this year was no different. Nor did we have any plans to take the kids out. In some ways that is a pity. Its a tradition that seems to be dying out and the kids will never know it.

Instead my wife made a buffet of assorted Halloween themed treats for the kids. While she did so I took the girls out for a walk telling them that we were going out ghost spotting. What I hoped was to see scream masked clad kids hiding in bushes waiting to pounce or white sheeted ghouls speeding across our line of vision from afar. The moon was big and shifting black clouds help set the scene. In eerie quiet we ventured out.

What we found were groups of kids drinking and smoking on benches. Younger in the precinct shaking a lamp post violently and trying to smash the lights with large stones. Shopping trolleys kicked over and the sound of smashing bottles. Not a costume in sight. Quite depressing.

The kids enjoyed their Halloween buffet though and after we had a laugh bobbing for apples. It reminded me of the days of trying to bite a swinging treacle scone with my hands tied behind my back only to be slapped about the face with it. Fun for the sake of it. The kids at least got something out of the night. When we were getting them ready for bed however I was drawn to raised voices outside and looked out the window to see to boys rolling about the road fighting surrounded by a baying pack.

In this little part of the world at least Halloween has long since died as a custom. I do find that sad. I'm sure though in closer knit communities it still runs strong but not here. I think next year I will put more thought into it. If we can't have it around about us then I will bring it indoors. Maybe some ghost stories by candlelight and more games for the kids to enjoy.

Struggling

As I turned the corner my heart sank. The food van came into view but was obscured by a number of bodies. An hour earlier I had been out for a walk and there was only one person being served but I was too out of puff to go over. After a short rest I was ready to get something to eat but now all these people blocked my way. Rather than turn around though I decided to go forth. With each slow step I was taking a large inhalation of breath and then exhaling it as I tried to regulate the irregular. But as I walked amid the tight group of people behind the 6 people waiting to be served my jaw started to quiver like a child who is on the verge of bursting into tears. It was starting. Different from Monday but the panic was coming. This time I wasn't going to make my stand, this time I was mentally off the scene like hare.

Defeated again for the second time in a week I made my way home with my tail between my legs cursing every ounce of my stupid body. I had been taken down there by a daily photography challenge. Its just a fun thing with no prizes but its a good stimulant to getting me out. Today's subject was a hot or cold filled roll. That's why I was there and went away empty handed but the smell of the cooked food also made my little tum feel large and empty so I was all the more annoyed at not being able to fill it and instead had to make do with a couple of bags of crisps.

Since Monday's little panic attack I have been struggling badly and despite trying not to let it hold me back I am getting battered down every time. Its not just queueing but life on the whole which I am finding hard just now. Yes I'm still determined. This is the stage in the past where so many times I have thrown in the towel because it was so hard and felt so futile but regardless of how little I am able to do I am still doing what I can. But it is infuriating that months of 'progress' can mean so little after one episode.

Text books say panic lasts 20-30 minutes, if I remember right, but that is bullshit. Maybe the intense panic lasts that long but the effects of it can last for days or even weeks. Physically since Monday I have been shattered, agitated, weak, stiff, shaky and what not. Even walks around the blocks have been difficult and one yesterday almost had me in a panic because I felt so bad. But I do know it will pass and I just have to keep things ticking over until they do. It is though frustrating.

To be honest I forgot how bad it was. I am sure everyone's experience varies in terms of the sensations they get and the intensity of them but in essence we all know that when putting ourselves through the wringer the problems do not come to an abrupt end when we come out the other side. The effect it can have on us mentally and physically are probably not something the medical profession realise. My mind set has not changed since Monday but my body just isn't working the way it has done for the past few months when I was able to walk x kilometres per day without problems. Now as soon as I am out the door I feel like I am coming to the end of a marathon. When things were going well I promised myself that I would not let bad times hold me back but I forgot just how hard it is when you are in a heightened state of anxiety to do what you were doing when you had less of that. I know what is happening and why it is happening but still it angers me. I know the panic has led to heightened anxiety which is now virtually constant and in turn is leading to tension which is tiring me. The adrenalin is wearing me out and on top of that since this mix is not effecting my sleeping pattern its like one ever increasing snowball effect of physical exhaustion.

There is a rebel within us all though which is what makes acceptance so hard. I know in an hour's time from typing this post I will go down there again because I cannot accept that I cannot walk down road and buy a hot filled roll. If I accept that then I feel I will start to develop a defeatist view that everything is beyond my reach. I guess I just have to balance pushing with being sensible, ie keep trying and walk away if its getting too much rather than allow myself to be thrown about about in the mental maelstrom like a rag doll. If I look through my old posts I will see this has happened before and happier times came later so I just have to weather the storm for now until calm returns.

Cold

For over a week now we having being fighting the growing urge to turn on the heating despite the cold. Not that it is the Antarctic or we cannot afford to have it on any more than anyone else but just on principal. The power companies are a sore point. It is obvious price fixing in which they are holding a nation upside down and shaking out the last of their small change. I have been determined not to give them a penny more than needed. The regulators won't do anything and the government can't do anything. Like with everything else in the UK we are in a sorry state.

My hands have been driving my brain insane with a constant torrent of obsessiveness over colour, sensations and anything else I can get stuck in that old mental spin cycle. Completely irrational and caused by the cold temperatures as I well know but not so easy to stop. Its like a stuck record that gradually grows to irk the hell out of you but you just can't lift the needle. I go through these periods again and again. But still I wouldn't turn the heating on and neither would my wife who is as dogged as me on the matter.

But tonight we finally gave in. The house was just so cold that any movement brought about a whip of cold air and the kids were feeling it too. God it felt great. It made we wonder how we never turned it on sooner but then I had a mental image of the electricity meter spinning away in a blur and some fat cat counting more coins. After a couple of hours we turned the heating back off again with the kids tucked in bed asleep under the covers.

Of course there are people living on the streets who know who what real cold weather feels like through no fault of their own in some cases. There are people who can't afford to feed their children and/or themselves. There are people with a whole host of problems bigger than this but I can't help getting it off my chest. I just get infuriated when I think about what these power giants are getting away with. Its the type of issue that in years gone by would have been the catalyst for a revolution.

Lastly can I just say something about the pic. Of course its a red man at the traffic lights. The phallic addition I didn't notice until later- I didn't add that. Something I would have done as a kid but I have grown out of that stage, possibly. 

Salt and Sauce

"Salt and sauce" I replied in a fluster.

The man behind the counter froze. Maybe the whole chip shop froze. There were a good few people in it, despite what the photo suggests, and as is always the case with hungry humans waiting for their food they were for the most part lost in the their own little worlds staring into nothingness. The left side is fried food- chips, pizza (yes- fried pizza), burgers, sausage, white pudding, black pudding, haggis, fish, etc. The right side is ice cream. Strange combination. And through the back of the right side is are tables- I think. But when I went in there were a few people or maybe it was the narrowness or paranoia. This seemed to wake them up as heads turned in my direction. A sense of deja vu came over me. For the second time in a few days I was getting food and had clumsily made myself the centre of attraction when all I wanted to do was skulk silently in the shadows.

The man behind the counter looked at the bottle of salt in his hand then the bottle of vinegar in his other hand and finally at me. I repeated his actions in reverse. How many times we did this I don't know but it felt like a few and every time I looked at him he looked stunned and speechless. It wasn't the response he was expecting and as a result didn't know how to react. It took time but suddenly I realised my error.

"I mean salt and vinegar" I quickly blurted out.

This brought a smile to his face and a wave of relief as he was able to get on to the job of sprinkling the chips I had ordered. It is a practice he constantly does without thinking like an automaton and by making him think I had stopped in in his tracks. Quite possibly he would have had a meltdown if I hadn't recovered my whits and I'd have had to run out the shop to tiny explosions and wires being catapulted in all directions. But all was OK.

"I don't get out much" I tried to explain.

He didn't hear me. He was now in his own little world smiling to himself and no doubt imagining telling friends later about the strange guy: "I had vinegar in one hand, salt in the other and he asks for salt and sauce" he tells the others shaking his head with a smile as he does so. Such is the monotony of repetitive occupation that it is the littlest changes that have the biggest effect.

It is a strange phenomena in Scotland. I was born in the West where I lived briefly then brought up in the East but now found myself back in the West again. Chip shops in the West provide salt and vinegar whereas in the East they provide salt and sauce- either tomato or brown (not like you get from the supermarket but a watered down version). How that originated I don't know but that is the way it is. Like those other zombies I'd placed my order of two bags of chips and was caught short when asked a further question. I wasn't expected that. I thought it was ask, pay, get and walk. It has been so long since I was in a chip shop I had missed out a step and been rattled by it so much that I blurted out memories of youth.

It was though a good night and a nice change. I decided to go for a drive last night and the family came along as usually. Hunger took me to a chip shop a couple of miles out. It was all about something new. We passed lots of them along the way but I wanted to go to this one and I never told my wife until we got there. I was planning on having something more but seem to have lost a five pound note somewhere so had to settle for chips. With the kids in the car outside the shop my wife and I went in where I was to do the ordering and paying. We then drove back with our prize and the kids had their 'supper' of Chippy Chips. It was nice- daddy driving and daddy buying the chips.

The unusual thing about this place is that although it is a chip shop it is more renowned locally for it's ice cream. Had it been a warm summer night I would have bought the girls one of those but its far from that at the moment. Maybe one night though as a treat. And as I got ready to tuck in to my chips as home I noticed a boast on the box which you can see if you enlarge the image:

'World Record Holders: 12406 fish suppers in 1 day'

All those fish and chips in one day and I'll bet no one asked for sauce. The man behind the counter may have been thinking back as he smiled.