I used to be something of a party animal in my youth and I’ve always enjoyed dressing up because you can really let your hair down at fancy-dress parties and carnivals. Over the years I’ve been a cave woman, a castaway, a saloon girl, a spider (rather than Spider-woman), an Indian squaw, a little Dutch girl (with plaits that curled upwards), a Victorian lady, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, a fairy (in a tutu), a gypsy (several times), a clown with a hula hoop for a trouser waistband (a handsome American told me I was the “cutest clown” he’d ever seen), Groucho Marx, a belly dancer (particularly when I was a belly dancer!), a hippie (many times, especially when I was at art college), a harem girl, Dame Edna Everage, a ghoul, a vampire and a witch (several times, especially on bad hair days) – and that is all I can bring to mind immediately – oh, and I nearly forgot… my friend Caroline and I dressed up as St Trinian’s girls for a vintage cycling event in June.

Anyway, my point is that, as a lover of dressing up, I really can’t knock others who enjoy to dress up; nevertheless… I can’t help but wonder if the townsfolk of Newton Abbot (where we go shopping most Saturdays) haven’t taken Halloween a bit far this year. Never before have I met so many ghouls, witches, monsters, corpses, pumpkins and ghosts out shopping as I did this morning. Strangely, my mum (who is rather outspoken in the normal run) didn’t “batter” an eyelid (we were looking forward to fish and chips ) at any of the weird spectacles (or spectres) we came across in our favourite Tescos store; but of course she is has very poor sight, so poor that she couldn’t see the price on the “Butcher’s specialiaty”.

“How much is that?” she asked pointing her stick at the joint on the counter.

“Mum it’s a plastic sawn off arm,” I said.

“Oh,” she said matter-of-factly and then she thought about it and gave a giggle.

A little later I was waiting for our order of take-away fish and chips when a young couple entered the fish and chip shop. The lad had a white face and black stitches painted around his neck whilst the girl (wearing a purple curly wig, tartan jumper and a frilly purple lace mini-skirt over black leggings with stripey socks) had a white face and wide painted on red lips turned up at the corners (like “The Joker” in Batman). The Frenchman owner of the establishment, who was serving (we are very cosmopolitan in Devon these days), looked up to welcome the customers as walked through the shop to the restaurant area. His eyes widened with surprise for a moment.

“You look nice!” he said to the girl joker.

She didn’t smile behind her painted sardonic (not sardinic, as befits a fish shop) smile but continued walking.

The diplomatic Frenchman looked down and, as he wrapped my order, he tried to stifle a smile. He felt me watching him and met my own smile, which invited a grin.

By the way… Did you hear about the tortoise that was attacked by two thug snails? The tortoise went into the police station and said, “I want to report an assault. I was attacked by two snails!”

“What did they look like? Can you describe them?” asked the police officer at the desk.

“No, I’m sorry, I can’t – it all happened so fast!”

Everything has been running a bit slow at No.5 this morning, not only because of the gloominess of the grey day, but also on account of our colds, especially mine (which is worse than Chris’s).

While I was on my phone a little earlier my eyes were drawn to something brown on the wall outside on the balcony. At first I thought it was a dead leaf stuck on the rough surface but, no, the brown thing moved, and it was heading towards a plant pot. I marvelled that he must have been on the go all night, climbing up the exterior wall to the top of the balustrade; nevertheless, the plants being my priority, I braved the wet outdoors to deal with the stoical slimy snail. In honour of his achievement in almost reaching his goal I took his photograph once on the wall and again on the balustrade, where I placed him in order that he might see the extent of his travails; but he was nervous and tucked his head under his shell. Shortly he was sent flying through the air and into a neighbour’s garden.

Talking of snails and things going slowly, recently a bachelor friend of mine hired an Eastern European lady to do the cleaning. Her work in the kitchen and bathroom was absolutely fine; likewise, dusting and bed-making were jobs that she breezed through. In fact, all chores were done well and within the usual time frame one would normally expect those jobs to take – all except for the hoovering… The new cleaning lady took an astronomical fifteen hours to hoover my friend’s two-bedroom house! He should have been more careful when he looked at her particulars – she was a Slovak!

This came in to Chris’s emails yesterday morning. Somebody found the funny side.