So, it’s Halloween, and everything I wrote about Halloween three years ago still holds true today - except today I don’t even have a jack o’lantern to give me that Halloweeny feeling. I always wait too long to buy a pumpkin, and then by the time Halloween rolls around there are no pumpkins left. In past years I’ve managed to scrounge one up from somewhere or other at the last minute, but this year - no dice. I’ve had to console myself with a digital jack o’lantern on my computer desktop (which is somewhat cold comfort, to be honest). Wah.

Well, there are no ghoulies and ghosties, but there’s definitely a winter chill in the air, and since we turned the clocks back this morning, it’s now getting dark at four in the afternoon - which, incidentally, brings this old article to mind.

To be honest, though, I feel less bothered by the approach of winter this year than I have in past years. Maybe it’s because Jeremy and I have thrown ourselves whole-heartedly into our winter eating phase, so in the chilly evenings I can look forward to a comforting, rich meal and a nice bottle of red wine in the warmth of our candle-lit kitchen.

Or maybe I’ve just been too busy to notice that we’re well on our way into the dark time of the year. I honestly don’t know where the time has gone since we got back from Florida. There have been so many things going on and so much I wanted to blog about, and now it all seems like ancient history. Nonetheless, here’s a quick rundown of What’s Been Going On…

Dublin: At the start of October, Jeremy and I spent a long weekend in Dublin with a bunch of other Mount Holyoke graduates. This was great fun, not only because I got to meet a lot of very interesting Mount Holyoke women, but also because we got to hang out with our friend Diarmaid, and we had the opportunity to go to the Hill of Tara and Newgrange - which, at the risk of sounding like a total New Age freak, was an experience bordering on the spiritual.

School: School has started again, and I’ve had my nose buried in books for weeks now. I love the topics we’re covering in class (all things cultural, sociological and historical to do with language), but in some ways it’s precisely because I like the topics so much that I’m finding it hard work - I just feel the need to do my absolute best work all the time so that I can do justice to this wonderful subject. Why oh why can’t I just be a slacker?

Translating: For the next several months, my working life is going to be largely dominated by a huge project for an exhibition at a former concentration camp outside Hamburg. It’s a fantastic professional opportunity and, obviously, an extremely worthwhile cause, but let me tell you: when you spend all day trying to make sense not just of arcane Nazi terminology, but also of the horrors that humanity is capable of, then you’re not always in the best of moods when clocking-out time rolls around (as if there were any such thing as "clocking-out time" for a freelancer…).

Music: Salter Cane has been playing away, as always. We’ve had a pretty good week; we played a completely raucous concert as part of the week-long Brighton Live music festival, and some of our tracks have been in "heavy rotation" on the local radio station. It’s been a terrible week for music in general, though: the day before we played our gig, the marvelous John Peel died. While I didn’t grow up listening to him like everyone else my age in the UK did, I’ve still come to see him as an integral part of the musical landscape in Britain, and a lot of the bands that I love (from The Smiths and Joy Division to PJ Harvey and Mr. Cave himself) might never have "made it" if it weren’t for John Peel. We played a Joy Division cover as a tribute to him at our concert on Wednesday (much like we played "Folsom Prison Blues" at the gig we had the day that Johnny Cash died - I hope this doesn’t become a habit), but there was - and is - a definite pall over every music-lover in the country. On a happier note, the band will be going into the studio in a few weeks to record two more songs - at which point we’ll have almost an album’s worth! So the music plays on…

And on that note, I shall go. There’s not going to be any pumpkin soup or trick-or-treating this evening, but there will be some venison stew (!) for dinner and warm apple crumble for dessert. A good autumnal dinner will go some way towards making up for my lack of a jack o’lantern this year. So, jack o’lantern or no: Happy Halloween!