Halloween III: Season of the Brits

A few weeks ago I started nagging the default "organizer" of social events, Oliver, about putting on a Halloween Party. This is my favorite holiday for the obvious reasons: costumes, chocolate, and embarrassing my husband. (This year I made him dress like a lion! Not quite as good as last year's K-Fed, but the thrift stores here kinda suck)

I was viciously planning up until Tuesday night. The agenda included Stephen King's "Carrie", drinking games and maybe a few classics like "pass the orange." Now that I'm married, I really can't justify making everyone play spin the bottle, even though it would be great odds for any girl there.

But Tuesday night I got a message from Oliver that the room we'd planned on had been reserved by someone else. Disappointing to say the least. What will I do with all the black construction paper bats? But plan B was the good old Moon & Bell, so I tried to go with the flow.

Wednesday is my day off, so after the myriad of futile attempts at cleaning our giant filthy house, I decided to put up our Halloween decor around our house. I was going to decorate the outside of the house, but realized that the little kids would probably take it as a sign to come Trick or Treat, and we'd cruelly be at the pub, hoarding all the candy amongst the adults. As Ryan and I were making dinner and getting ready later, I realized there were no trick or treaters in our neighborhood-- probably because everyone here is Muslim or Hindu. I know the Hindu Diwali festival is going on this week, and I guess maybe the Muslims don't like Halloween.

But I digress. I dressed as Medusa, using a cut-up 29 pence children's mask, and I made Ryan go as a lion. We walked to the Moon & Bell and so NO ONE dressed up, probably because this is sort of a recently adopted American holiday. But our group looked pretty good at the pub, a lot of cheap masks and etc.

I met a few new people on Wednesday night (and no, I didn't give them my phone number this time) and these guys wanted to know all about America. It seems everybody keeps asking me what I "truly think" of England. I'm still not sure myself, but I usually tell them its very different, but that I like it. One of the guys, who had visited Florida once, said he didn't think it was different at all. I admitted that there were many similarities, but that the social rules were quite different-- that I still wasn't sure of many of them. To this he replied "There is one rule in England: to drink. If you drink, you'll be alright." And he's partly right. I've been pretty surprised to hear my coworker (who's a grandmother) bantering with older customers about how "pissed" they were last night and so-and-so fell asleep on the bus, and etc.

It was, all in all, a pretty fun evening. I think I did insult Kevin's wife when I was trying to explain what a "MILF" was (long story) and I definitely had a bit too much to drink, but that's really how one does it in this country, I think.