Halloween Made Scarily Simple

"So you are just going as a ghost?" I was about nine and standing in the bathroom with my mother as she reached into the depths of the linen cupboard, perched high on a stepladder. I had a reputation for doing things very elaborately. Everything was researched, rehearsed and eventually executed with the maximum of attention to detail and the minimum regard for my parent’s belongings. When I wanted to find out how the TV worked; I took it apart. My mother would sigh as she dialled the TV repairman but she seemed largely resolved to her fate.

“Yes” I said taking a perfectly ok sheet from my mother ‘but I will need to cut some holes in it”.

I was indeed going to the church youth club fancy dress competition as a ghost, but not your common or graveyard ghost! I was going as Jack O’Lantern, the fabled Irish ghoul.

The whole outfit pivoted on me being able to create a pumpkin head with exactly the same red glowering eyes as the light cast by sister’s bike’s rear lamp. Having experimented with transistors and resistors, I concluded that my sister had to sacrifice her safety. The light was removed and rewired into the base of my mother’s orange washing up bowl out of which I had cut two eyeholes.

On all Hallow Eves my sister and I turned up early at St John’s Church Yard. Mounted on a footstool by the entrance to the church garden, the inverted bowl, now moulded with papier-mâché, on my head and shrouded in a now brown sheet, I cut a terrifying 7-foot silhouette. The effect was rendered even more startling by the red eyes and the unintentional aural backlight cast by my sister’s headlamp. I had bound her head in crêpe bandages but then got bored so she pedalled furiously, a mummy from the neck up, in her anorak behind me, her bike mounted on blocks.

Needless to say I won, which was really the point, although the church may have lost a few parishioners that night.

These days I do things much more simply.

A wreath of dried leaves on your door is a really welcoming way to greet your guests. I have just discovered a very quick way to dry your own foliage. Simply take a leaf, place it on a sheet of kitchen towel and microwave it for a couple of seconds at a time on a very low setting. You will have to experiment as some will scorch. Spray them with acrylic vanish and wire them into a floristry oasis wreath cast. The wreath will look great up until Christmas when you could ‘season’ it with a red bow or frosted glitter.

For a kiddie wreath; thread plastic baubles onto several strands of twisted picture wire and fashion into a circle around the kitchen bin and Boris is your uncle!

Pumpkin carving is my Halloween nightmare so I devised a way to avoid endless scooping and carving. Leave the pumpkin intact and simply paint on the features using glow-in-the-dark-paint, £3.65, from the Art Stationers, 31 Dulwich Village.

Another fiendishly timesaving trick is to hollow out the pumpkin, cut out the eyeholes and a round hole in the middle through which you can poke a carrot. There is no need to bother with cutting a mouth, when you have made such a monstrous nose!

For snacks we serve toasted pumpkin seeds and roasted garlic. Roast whole bulbs in the oven in foil, for a delicious purée you can spread on toast with Very Bloody Marys, a Roullier White Haunted House Specialty, follow the usual recipe but add lots of fresh horseradish and a shot of sherry!

Packed lunch ideas that will make their day

This is my favourite time of the year I love a crisp, sunny autumnal day. The summer is well and truly over, everyone is back at work and the kids are back to school. 

‘Back to School’ even today that phrase fills me with absolute terror; much the same as; “I’m afraid its dry rot’ or ‘do you want chrysanthemums in that bouquet?”  

My school career started out wonderfully well and term-time was indistinguishable from the holidays. We went to St Johns & St Clements as it was then in the tiny building on the corner of North Cross Road. Each September my sister and I would run down Archdale Road with the dog, who would take herself home after she had seen us safely through the school gates, hug our teacher, admire her new clogs - it was the 70’s - and picked up where we left off in July. 

Then one dark September I was banished to the Dickensian, towering Archbishop Tenison’s Grammar School at the Oval. From loving encouragement to draconian admonishment in less than two months, I simply didn’t get it. I had been sent from a pastoral, East Dulwich summer of content into drizzly, grizzly urban horror, where it always rained and it was always double physics. ‘Miss’ was replaced by a flock of masters, gone were her colourful clogs and tabards, replaced with a flurry of gowns and mortarboards. 

To make matters worse Tenison’s had seen fit to dress the lower school in blazers in that particular, and peculiar, shade of Yves St Laurent electric blue. You could always spot a Tensonian, not by the blue blazer, but we were the only kids with our jackets on inside out. 

My mother knew I hated Tenison’s and she took to writing little notes and hiding them amongst my sandwiches for me to find at lunchtime. To this day I marvel at how sweet that was. I never have time for breakfast yet my mum would make breakfast and packed lunches for us all and even find time to slip in a little message. 

Here is a selection of quick sandwich ideas that are ready in moments and children and adults alike adore. The trick is to utilise as many leftovers as possible. So plan ahead and always make a little extra. 

Tarka Cowlam, of the Pavilion Café in Dulwich Park, suggests using left over roast pork in a wholemeal baguette: Slice the pork add a little apple sauce, tarragon mustard and crisp oak or cos lettuce. 

Caterer Suzanne James, Barry Road SE22, uses leftover Sunday roast beef, with caramelised onion chutney, horseradish and rocket on Mighty White, cut the crust off and WOW! Another of her favourites is Cumberland sausage with Branston Pickle in a soft white bap. 

Tariq of Tandoori Nights on Lordship Lane advises us not to be scared of recycling last night’s left over vegetable curry, spoon into pita pockets and revitalise with a little cucumber raita.

Similarly our friends at Dos Amigos, also Lordship Lane, tell us cold vegetable chilli works well in wraps with sour cream and cheese. Cold scrambled eggs in brown pita pockets with sprinkled grated cheese and shredded lettuce.  This works equally well with omelette or tortilla.

Avocado, salad and pine nuts in a crispy brown roll. 

Cheddar and sliced strawberries on multi grain with lightly spread low calorie mayonnaise.

Mixed grated carrot, cheese and a tiny drop of olive oil, preferably in a big cheesy bap. 

Roast chicken and apricot or mango. 

Pop in a little note, you never know they could still be talking about it 30 years later. 

Oh and cut them into triangles. Everyone knows they taste much better that way!