Once upon a time in the imagination of an Idiot

It started to get windy for the first time last night (I know...you can take tablets!!) and it's the first real sign that we are getting into my favourite season.

Autumn has always been my favourite ever since I was a little kid. Winter, even with fun things like snow, was always too cold, too miserable and more often than not too wet. Spring is little more that an after fart of Winter. In the UK again it tends to be rainy, miserable if it's wet and coldish. Even the new Spring like things that are going on around you don't seem that intresting..While Autumn has really good stuff like bird migrations and hedgehogs and tortioses hibernating. I remember when the Blue Peter Tortoise used to be put in a box to hibernate, and I always thought what a fab time it would be to sleep for 3 months. Except that said tortoise managed to get a garden fork put through it which is why they started painting it's name on it's shell.

Summer is, well too hot. I'm a big lad and I don't DO heat terribly well. I wilt like a 10 day old orchid that hasn't had a sniff of water since it arrived from the garden centre. Summer was also the time of long holidays, and truth be know, I got bored. Even when I became older I was never one for holidays. I am fine for 2 or 3 days but after that I start to pace. I have always been one for doing stuff, and the idea of lying by a pool and getting sunburnt never appealed. well, maybe the watching the girls in bikini's appealed ..lol

So, we are back to Autumn. Bonfires, bird migrations, the leaves turning a fab shade of red/brown as the start to die. One of lifes secret ambitions is to drive through the Appalachian Mountains in the Fall,playing Aaron Copelands Appalachian Spring...merely because it would be funny. Well, I would laugh at the juxtaposition of it. Most people would think "there goes that mad Englishman in his open topped Morgan"....err the Morgan is in the dream too.

Now there is one thing, one NEW thing that has arrived in autumn that I am not too keen on. Halloween. An American export to the UK that should, really, have stayed in America. I can see the point for the Pagans, after all, it's an important holiday for them....and I can SORT of see the point for Christians as, it's all hallows Eve, and tomorrow is All Saints Day. If you don't know what All Saints Day is then let me explain. All Saints Day is the day for anyone with a name which doesn't HAVE a saints day.See...easy innit! Mind you, I can't help feeling that it's a bit of a cop out by the church just giving everyone ONE day.Anyway, back tio Halloween. Pagan festival, stolen by the Christians and all...so, what the hell does it have to do with children knocking at the damn door at all hours of the night demanding "trick or treat". I'm sure that, in the USA, the children all dress up in costumes, only go round to the next door neighbours, and that their parents are stood at the end of the pathway with a benevolent, slightly embarassed smile on their face as "Old Ma bennet" hands out the "vittles" to the "young uns".

However, is this the case in the UK ....no. In the UK you have gangs of thuggish little bastards , bullying old ladies into handing over part of their pension because "it's alloween innit". Try fobbing those little gits off with a handfull of candy and see how far you get. Are their parents stood at the gate waiting for them?.No!. Is their drug dealer around the corner waiting to sell them another handful of smack?....More than likely! Do they dress up in costumes like they do in the movies, not a chance. You are lucky if one of the cuts the top out of a bin liner and walks like a zombie not because he is trying to, but because of the smack! Not in the UK people dressed as vampires, in the UK children think that halloween is about dressing in a hoody, with it pulled up so far over you face nobody can recognise you as you scrape your key down the side of someone's car or chuck a brick through their window cos the stingy old bastard only gave you 50p.

rant over!!!