The Night Watch

The usual problem the Halloween lanterns face is that gusty breezes will blow them out, but the night was relatively wind-free around Swanvale Halt. However it was wet, and so the flickering flames faced the greater danger of being extinguished that way. After toasting the dead in the churchyard as usual, I left this little fellow to do his work against the church wall under the protecting arm of a headstone cross, so we will see how long his light lasted.

Groups of little witches and other horrors made their way up and down the hill between about 6 and 7pm, but I only had two children and their parents come to visit me slightly later, when I thought everyone had gone home. Up in Leeds, Professor Purplepen had more than twenty in seven groups, while Dr FireFace in Oxford claimed a hundred. That's a lot of chocolate. 

Interestingly I have pagan friends who are starting to rail against the fact that their serious religious festival of Samhain has been commercialised and turned into a camp pumpkin-and-spookfest. They'd like to detach Samhain from Halloween in the same way many Christians would like to separate Halloween from All Hallowtide. I think they're looking through the wrong end of the telescope a bit, but there you go.

Viva La Muerte ...

... was how I greeted the two Catrinas I shared the train with as we disembarked at Waterloo on Saturday and got a big skeletal grin in reply. Later, while I and the others were at the Hoop & Toy not far from the V&A on Saturday afternoon I could glimpse a little anomaly on a picture frame next to our table: it turned out to be a very tiny ghost.

It's the season of the dead. I normally expect about 40 attenders at the annual Memorial Service on the afternoon of the last Sunday in October, and as the number of funerals we take declines, I always wonder how long this event has got to go, but this year roughly 60 souls turned up. The candles went up to the high altar to burn down as usual. 

Because of how the dates fall this year, there will be a number of occasions to mark the season at Swanvale Halt church should anyone feel inclined. We normally have a midweek mass on a Tuesday morning, joined on this occasion by a eucharist for All Saints tomorrow evening and then the All Souls Requiem Mass on Thursday. I wonder how many will venture out as Storm Ciarán gets going. But the swede lanterns are ready for action, even if they get blown out (as they often do). 

Obligatory Halloween Shot

In fact Halloween night was wet and windy at Swanvale Halt and keeping the lanterns lit was no easy task. By the time I set out for the churchyard for my customary toast to the dead and to leave a lantern to watch over them - for however long or short a time - there wasn't a single glint of a candle from a pumpkin. Nor did I get any visitors so I will have to eat all the chocolate myself. It will take some time.

Halloween is my younger niece's birthday and my sister took her and her friends out trick-or-treating, though at 13 I get the impression she's a little long in the tooth for it as it seems to be primary-school age children who mainly engage in it. Earlier in the day they'd been shopping in Bournemouth and visited the tomb of the Shelleys at St Peter's which seems like an appropriate cultural activity for the day!

All Hallowtide - Presences and Visitors

A couple of days late, here is my obligatory Halloween lantern photo. Keeping the candles lit this year was challenging: my home lantern was eventually moved down to the doorstep where it was sheltered enough to keep burning, and the one I left to guard the churchyard went out very rapidly to judge by the state of the candle when I picked it up in the morning. 

Meanwhile inside the church, we wondered whether we would get any of our Roman Catholic brethren attending our services as Fr Jeffrey is self-isolating after a positive covid test and so there was no mass here, but the only visitors were a lady and daughter at the 8am service. The little girl was 8 or so, arrayed in a hooded cloak for Halloween, and said the Lord's Prayer louder than anyone else. She appeared at would have been the altar rail had we one at the moment, and asked 'Can I have a blessing, Father, it's my birthday'. How could a poor priest refuse.

In the afternoon we held the annual Memorial Service for relatives of those whose funerals we'd conducted - annual except for last year, when we couldn't. There were 35 living souls present, which was OK. Rick the verger laid out the candles to be lit, a bit closely packed for comfort (in previous years they have occasionally melted together!) but very impressive left to burn down in the dark of the chancel.

Last Hurrah

With the aim of lessening the number of services in these straitened times I cheated yesterday and kept the 8am mass at Swanvale Halt church as All Saints and the 10.30 one as All Souls. We had more living souls turn out for the latter than at any time since the first lockdown began in March, in fact more or less equivalent to what we'd been getting before it began (and not leaving much space in the church). I wondered whether people were coming because it might have been their last chance for some time, but we hadn't actually had confirmation that places of worship would be closing, so it may not have been the case. That will be it for some time, though: it's back to the missa solitaria for now.

On Halloween night I tottered down to the church to make my customary toast to the dead. There was a variety of litter around the churchyard which I cleared up. Whoever had left the litter had also discarded (quite neatly) a Silent Pool gin glass, which I was happy to confiscate and convert to good use.