All Souls Day

Another bank holiday come and gone. This is the last one until next year, so I got the most out of it by staying on the sofa. Neither Flatmate Suzie nor I were too ambitious. Unlike the 10,000 people who ran the Dublin Marathon yesterday. The traditions for Halloween in Ireland are thus: (from what I could see from the sofa)

1- Fireworks thru all of October culminating in big (read: loud) fireworks until 2am the night before I have to catch an early train to Belfast. I mean the actual night of Halloween. Culminating in the actual night of Halloween. Yeah.
2- Children dress up in costumes, go door to door and shout "Trick or Treat" thereby annoying the living hell out of the adults who do not prefer this Americanization of the holiday. As one comic put it: we invented it and then the Americans took it for themselves and made it better. I guess you don't hollar anything and you're supposed to give nuts and fruit instead of candy. Whatever, old man, just give me the Mars bar.
3- Bonfires. It's actually called Bonfire Night and people make large bonfires, complete with burning tires. I wonder if they've seen it on the Simpsons?
4- Adults dress in costume (fancy dress is what it's technically called) and take to the pubs, excited about the clocks being set back, resulting in one more hour of drinking time should you be able to stand at that point. Women's costumes still in the realm of (insert occupation here) Ho. Vampire Ho. Nurse Ho. Ho Ho. No wait, that's Christmas. You get the idea.
5- The Dublin Marathon. We went to watch FS's friend run, managed to miss him and then made him bike to us after he finished. It was on his way home... My co-worker Matt also ran, we missed him too. Some people dressed up to run it. One guy was Superman, I think I saw Robin run by. The best had to be 2 chickens I saw at the finish. It's not enough that they were running 26 miles, no. They felt compelled to do it in full chicken costumes. Yellow fur and everything. At least they didn't wear the chickens feet, although one did wear tights.

I'm not sure what happens when Halloween is on, say at Tuesday, because it seems to me that the last weekend of October is always a bank holiday weekend. I think they got really lucky on this one.

And yes, it really is 6:15 AM. I managed to change my watch but none of the other clocks in the house. So when my alarm went off at 6am, it was really 5am and I didn't realize it until I was dressed and running late. Some things never change...