Couldn’t really let tonight pass without mentioning that it’s Halloween and we’re just back from a bit of a “do” at our neighbour’s house. The local kids who dropped by for some trick or treating were rewarded with a bit of old-fashioned “bobbing for apples”, which pretty much no-one does any more, so it was great fun for them. Of course when I was a youngster here in Scotland it was called guising and there were certainly no pumpkins in those days – Oh no, it was a case of hollowing out turnips, which if you weren’t careful resulted in the loss of a digit.
My dad once helped me create a pretty spectacular one for a Brownie Halloween party, but unfortunately on the way there, it got dropped (in those days we walked everywhere unaccompanied, even at night). Being a root vegetable it pretty much fell to pieces, so when it came to the prize for the best “neep lantern” it was in a bit of a sorry state and did not fare well against other, initially lesser neeps! When I got back, I of course told the parents it had befallen an accident on the way home from the party, so as not to have made the making of the lantern a waste of time – One of the rare lies of my childhood and I felt bad about it for years. Funny how those things stick.
But of course Halloween is now big business and pop-up shops appear on our high streets during the build up to the 31st selling nothing but ghoulish dressing-up outfits, scary masks and very realistic, gory make-up. Our daughter had two events at the weekend and needed a different outfit for each one. In fact the town was so busy with Halloween revellers on Saturday night that the ATMs ran out of money in the early hours of the morning. With no access to cash for taxis home, there were many SOS calls to parents, us included.
Most of this commercialisation of Halloween has come from across the pond but there is no point in trying to fight it anymore, so I did indeed buy myself a pumpkin this year. Unlike with the “neeps” of my youth however, faster than you can say Jack Robinson he became the fine Jack-o’-Lantern you see above.
So, what song comes to mind when I think of Halloween? – Far too many to mention actually so instead I am going to pick something, yet again, from one of our favourite television shows – Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This song, Virgin State of Mind by Belgian band K’s Choice, featured in the 1999 episode “Doppelgängland” where the vampire alternate of Willow Rosenberg arrives in Sunnydale. The Bronze nightclub was the meeting place of choice for Buffy and her pals, and it was usual to have bands playing there. If you watched all seven seasons, as we did, you were treated to some excellent music and this song by K’s Choice is the one I enjoyed most.
Virgin State of Mind by K’s Choice:
K’s Choice have been around since the early ’90s and their music can be described as guitar-based, singer-songwriter rock or folk-rock. Sarah Bettens’ husky voice is the band’s most distinctive characteristic. Sarah and her brother Gert write all the songs for the band and although most of the lyrics are easily understood, some are strange and incomprehensible. This led Gert to comment on this song, Virgin State of Mind – “Listening to the lyrics for the first time, you may find it hard to understand their meaning. When you listen to them a second time however, you may sense a basic truth in those cryptic words. If you do, please let me know.” – Will do Gert.
As it turns out, by the time I finish this post and publish it, Halloween will be over and we will have moved into All Hallows’ Day. Time to blow out the candle in my Jack-o’-Lantern then, but before I go I will share a clip featuring the the scariest group of characters from aforementioned seven seasons of Buffy – “The Gentlemen from Hush”.
“Hush” was the tenth episode in the fourth season where creator Joss Whedon set out to write a silent episode, almost completely devoid of speech. Only about 17 minutes of dialogue is presented in the entire 44 minutes. In “Hush”, a group of fairytale ghouls named “The Gentlemen” come to town and steal everyone’s voices, leaving them unable to scream when they cut out their hearts. The episode was highly praised when it aired and was the only episode from that season to be nominated for an Emmy Award. Prepare to be afraid.
Virgin State of Mind Lyrics
(Song by Sarah Bettens/Gert Bettens)
There’s a chair in my head on which I used to sit
Took a pencil and I wrote the following on it
Now there’s a key where my wonderful mouth used to be
Dig it up, throw it at me
Dig it up, throw it at me
Where can I run to, where can I hide
Who will I turn to now I’m in a virgin state of mind
Got a knife to disengage the voids that I can’t bear
To cut out words I’ve got written on my chair
Like do you think I’m sexy
Do you think I really care
Can I burn the mazes I grow
Can I, I don’t think so
Can I burn the mazes I grow
Can I, I don’t think so
Where can I run to, where can I hide
Who will I turn to now I’m in a virgin state of mind
Virgin state of mind
Virgin state of mind
Virgin state of mind
What's It All About? 
Our childhood Hallowe’ens were quite different affairs to now, weren’t they? (And now I understand the Scottish expression ‘neeps and tatties”!) I remember a Hallowe’en party when I was about 10 where the apple-bobbing was done in a bucket of flour instead of water. I don’t know if the parents thought it would be less messy or less dangerous but I think the opposite was true – I nearly drowned in that flour! Came up gasping for breath with white powder in every facial orifice (no wonder I never got into drugs); you could have baked cakes with the contents of my nasal cavities for weeks after, although probably not chosen to eat them…
Nice track from K’s Choice.
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So different C, but I’ve never heard of flour instead of water when bobbing for apples – a right messy affair. Glad I’ve cleared up the issue re the “neeps and tatties”, usually served with haggis of course. In Scotland a turnip is the big fella which is not called a swede as in England – Turnip then becomes “neep” of course. Don’t quite know how I got from neeps to K’s Choice but quite a cosmic leap!
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Like the song – a new name to me
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Only know it because of Buffy – Also where The Sundays performed Wild Horses and I know you like them.
Working on my next opus here whilst I await the publication of The Chain – How sad are we?
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