Hallowe'en Fun

We were all set for a night on the town on Friday - but first, I had to go to a Fairtrade meeting at the Globe.
If this had been a normal week, I would probably have gone to the Transition Towns meeting, and the Friends of the Earth meeting as well - but I was otherwise occupied. The Fairtrade meeting, though, was one I couldn't ignore. Together with Jump4Timbuktu, we're organising the First Fairtrade Fair for the 13th December, at the Buttermarket.
Jo took the opportunity to indulge in one of the Globe's sticky cakes. She also commandeered a complete stranger's laptop in the middle of the meeting! None of us had remembered to bring the quotes for printing the posters and flyers with us, so she quickly looked up her emails, and found the information.
The Camera Club have put on their annual exhibition at the Globe this week, and some of the pictures are very good indeed (my mind wasn't wandering - I took full minutes of the meeting!)

After dinner (pumpkin ragout with chorizos - we had a lot of pumpkin to use up after carving the heads) we got changed for the evening. Since Hay-on-Fire wasn't happening this year, we decided to make a night of it round the town.
I had thought of wearing my Goth dress, but decided I'd freeze - so I was a pirate instead. Mark has a rather fine black leather doublet, which makes him look like an executioner, and he'd brought his LARP vambraces and greaves with him too (that's Live Action Role Playing - protection for lower arms and lower legs).
We started off at Kilvert's - we had their special meal there on Wednesday, coq au vin with pint or glass of wine, two meals for £13.50, and very nice it was too. While we were there, we noticed that they would have Hobgobin on draught in the next day or so, and also Howling Ale (which we didn't like as much). The Hobgoblin was wonderful, though. They were supposed to be having a fancy dress party with live music in aid of the Macmillan Nurses, but we didn't see much sign of that, so we moved on to the Crown.
The Crown has the best selection of whiskies in town, I think, so it was a Talisker for me and a JD for Mark. There were a few more people in fancy dress there - and Adey, who tried to sell us a sword and helmet from his re-enacting days. We were hoping to see Richie and Jackie there - Jackie told me she had a cat costume ready - but we must have missed them.
The Globe had live music on - the start, apparently, of a new live music season. Little Rumba were doing a mixture of blues, tango and klezmer. I got quite excited when I saw this on the posters - but I've had to explain what klezmer is to everyone I've mentioned it to. East European Jewish music, heavy on the clarinets and fiddles, isn't really known about in this area - but I love it. They were very good indeed - but Mark found it a little strange that the clarinet and saxophone player looked just like his old co-ordinator at work. Also on the bill was Dirty Ray, who plays guitar with hands going so fast they blur. Someone I spoke to said that Dirty Ray worked at Tom's Record Shop for a while.
We rolled home about midnight - a good night out.

Our Hallowe'en celebrations didn't stop there though.
Rob Soldat was telling children's stories at the Library at 11am the following morning, and Mark was keen to find out what he was like as a storyteller. There were around half a dozen kids there, a couple of mums, and me and Mark sitting on the adult chairs to one side. Rob started off with a local story, about a ghostly bull in Llanigon, and went on to Ireland, with the tale of how Cu Chulain (whose real name meant 'he who knows the way') got lost with all the Men of Ulster, and ended up having a party in an iron house that their enemies were busily setting fire to outside. They escaped, of course.
Then another Irish story about a shapechanging old woman/weasel and a pot of gold, and for the latecomers a quick funny one about a spooky house and a toddler who was too small to be scared.
Next month, he's doing Scottish stories.