Short Bits and Pieces

Some odds and ends that don’t belong anywhere else.

I don’t recall where this came from. Or why. I think I may have been trying to say something about the simplicity of my homeland.

The Ordinary Life of Dave Wilson

This one has a bit of cultural cringe about it, too. Something about the Americanisation of Australia. Which is getting worse, by the way.

Halloween

13 thoughts on “Short Bits and Pieces”

    1. We do have chocolates, actually. But the Halloween thing? I agree. We can certainly do without it, but commercial interests keep pushing the concept and it is fuelled by what we refer to down here as ‘the cultural cringe’.

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  3. speaking of halloween, I was surpised to find Halloween stuff in the grocery store, two weeks ago. The kids haven’t even rubbed the glory off their new backpacks, and suddenly there’s candy corn and hershey’s kisses in orange and black bags.
    Then I realized: if they wait until a week before Halloween, the candy will still be fresh, but the shelves will have been cleared for the upcoming Turkey day treats, which, if they waited to the week previous to Thanksgiving, there’d be no room for them next to the santas and the decorated christmas trees.

    And these days no one allows a child to actuallyeat all that candy anyway, they have to settle for the wrinkly apple or the “healthy’ stuff. bleah. Mum and Dad eat it instead.

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  4. Hallowe’en is October 31, the evening before All Souls Day in the Catholic Church. In a way it’s become to ASD what Mardi Gras is to Easter; a time to kick up one’s heels, soap that nasty neighbor’s windows, and eat all the candy that you can get.

    https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween

    In fact, it goes back even further than England, all the way to the Celts. But we’ve gotten so prissy about it all, anything even faintly reeking of “naughty” is vandalism, and children are protected by daddies when they go out trick or treating. It was more fun to go with a gang, into the dark…
    When I was in highschool several of the senior boys took the history teacher’s VW and carried it up onto the front porch of the house of the bank president. Luckily the teacher laughed, the bank president laughed, and no one was arrested for car theft or vandalism. Earlier times.

    My uncle was born two days before Christmas, and he said it was years before he realized that all that celebrating wasn’t for him, after all.

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    1. Ah, yes! I was involved in carrying a VW beetle belonging to one of the staff onto a verandah on the last day of school. I think I can confess to it now. They have probably stopped looking for us.

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  5. Halloween! If anyone stopped to look at this tradition rationally in today’s age, it would never be adopted. Not only do strangers give children sweets, they go knocking on stranger’s doors to gain access to them. Crazy! I always forget the darn thing despite the hype in the kmarts of this world. I am surprised when someone knocks on the door and all I have to give them is a Tim tam – if they are lucky! I have been sprayed by a water pistol but I got over it! Lol. I wish we could launch an Australian take on it – distributing Anzac bikkies and bangers perhaps? Even a pie floater would do!

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