Why is it always me who has to get the pumpkin-carving blisters?

Here he is. He looked great on our doorstep until next-door-neighbour put out a much bigger, orange, nattily-carved pumpkin. But then the other neighbour appeared and put out... a swede. Tesco ran out of pumpkins, apparently, but the swede made a pretty good substitute.

We had a couple of trick-or-treaters - two boys dressed in totally lame outfits (mainly Santa hats and normal clothes, I think), and a little boy who had a pumpkin mask on. He wasn't overly impressed with his lolly: "I've already got one like that!" but his mum shushed him and said "What do you say?" He looked at Holly, who was on her back legs looking over the lower half of the front door, and said: "Thank you for the sweets, lovely doggy." Holly woofed, he dropped his lolly and fell onto the doorstep.

After dinner (roast pumpkin with tagliatelle, by Steve) and after Steve had finished his gourmet strop, we watched The Fog with our neighbours, who'd come over to avoid paying for trick-or-treats. It is a 1970s film, I think, about a smoke machine that blows smoke all over a village until 6 of them have died. The special effects were fairly poor, but the plot was amusing and there was lots of stabby action.

So that was lovely.