Challenge: Weekly Prompts: Weekend Challenge
Topic: All Hallows Eve
This weekend GC and Sue ask:
It’s Halloween and the Weekend Challenge from partner GC and me is All Hallows Eve.
A scary apparition – a figment of your imagination or is the spectre real? Is it a shadow in the corner, or a spirit from beyond, a phantom, a ghostly presence or someone in disguise?
A wide-open challenge, something to get your fangs into.
This year I wont be carving a Pumpkin, well not a ‘traditional’ orange one any way, maybe I will get one of the small crown prince squash we have in the garden and carve that.
So why did I put ‘traditional’ in inverted commas? Well for me it has never been traditional, the pumpkin not being traditionally grown in Wales. When I was small on the night of ‘Nos Calan Gaeaf’, I would carve a jack-o’-lantern out of a turnip, this is something I have been meaning to do again for years, though I remember it being very hard.
Once we had it hollowed out, and with a skull like face carved in, we would punch holes in the sides for a piece of string , and pop a candle inside.
There was no trick or treating until I had grown up, or if there was I did not do it, people did not throw eggs and flour, nor did we dress up, although you might catch a glimpse of someone covered in a sheet, or maybe it was a ghost. But I might venture outside for a walk with my grandmother, taking our lanterns, we would pass others doing the same. Always being courteous to nod or speak a greeting to those we encountered, but not with their real names in case the fairies or the spirits heard us!
Anyway alas this year I have no photo of a carved turnip for you, but here is a pumpkin from a few years ago.
2011
Ken
That is the best carving I have ever seen!
Halloween trick or treating wasn’t around when I was a child. though by the time I was a teenager I knew what it was about and for some odd reason, we became engaged on Halloween.
Thank you for taking part again, Ken 🙂
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Thank you, yes I think by the time I was in my teens there were some children trick or treating, but still very few. We didn’t wait for Halloween, we got engaged the week before. I think Bonfire night was a bigger deal when I was younger.
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Absolutely, Bonfire night is still is a big family deal for us but perhaps not this year though. when I was a kid we had Mischievous night on the 4th Nov. And we did play tricks because no one had thought of asking for a treat first. My dad used to take off our gate and hide it every year because he knew that if not then someone else would.
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wow, he’s beautiful ❤
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