The mania begins

And so, Vancouver gears itself up for Halloween. And Kerrisdale community goes mad. Small children are already sporting costumes and masks, the swimming pool attendants were in fancy dress and were having a "Spooktacular", there were random mothers selling toffee apples outside the ice rink, and one of the guys in the bank was dressed as a giant pumpkin and gave me some smarties. Unless you've been to America or Canada around Halloween, you can't imagine what this holiday is like. It's nearly as big as Christmas, and takes just as much preparing for. I remember my mother labouring over a tiger's outfit for weeks in Victoria before the actual day arrived, when I was four or five. In fact there is a fantastic picture of me in this costume somewhere, so I shall try and get it scanned in.

The good side of this is that I like being back in the middle of something that the community and the city gets really excited about. Every shop has their window dressed for Halloween, every worker seems to be trying to dress up, the bus driver was giving out chocolate on Denise's bus, and there are parties galore going on. Downtown you can find everything from gothic nights, to Halloween strip nights (with 'evil' women promised), to kids parties, to haunted house theme rides, it's just manic. Never in a million years would you see this in England!

And whilst walking back from the swimming pool today (prior to it being invaded by millions of small children, paying $1 for face painting, colouring and apple bobbing), Kerrisdale actually felt quite homely. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that it was dusk, or at least getting dark, and everything tends to look better when that's happening. But there was a bit of a holiday atmosphere going on, everyone was in a good mood, and although it was raining I felt good about life. Even if I had just forked out $24.06 to the bank to get a damn cheque book. I guess I got some smarties back in return.

Today I also constructed a resume to send to some film production companies for extras work, and wrote 696 words of a little project that I have started to keep me occupied. I have been meaning to do it for a couple of years, but have only now had the inclination. I expect I shall run out of enthusiasm for it in a couple of days, but for now.... the only other thing was to watch Batman Returns on tv, and that was worse than death.

A note: why is it that England has given up on Halloween? Or are we just too over-exuberant over here?