Agent Big Red reporting.
Here is a Halloween pigture from the Piggyfriends. This piggy's name is Halloween as that was the day, in 2006, upon which our Slave went to collect him and his friend Hope. He is a Harlequin piggy.
You may notice that this is not a real pumpkin ( it would be hard NOT to notice ). Slave made this pumpkin in her pottery class many years ago. They were supposed to be making plain coiled pots but Slave improvised. She left it to dry, intending to glaze it the next week but the class was cancelled due to severe weather. When classes resumed, she found that the pottery teacher had "helped" by glazing everybody's work but she had used brown glaze instead of orange.
Slave didn't really mind as it meant that her pumpkin was ready to be lit and placed on our garden wall on October 31st. and the colour doesn't notice in the dark.
Slave first tasted pumpkin on a visit to the US and never wanted to repeat the experience ( no offence intended to you pumpkin lovers out there ) so we don't have pumpkin to eat.
When Slave was little, her granny always made a Halloween lantern out of a swede or turnip from the garden and Slave carries on this tradition. She celebrates this day as Samhain ( pronounced sowain ) which is the Celtic festival to mark the end of summer. Samhain means "summer's end" in Gaelic. It represents the death of the summer sun god, Lugh. Slave gets miserable at this time of year as she hates the cold and dark English winter. We don't like it either as there is less grass for us to eat and our favourite tasty weeds are killed off by the frost but we don't think that pumpkin will be on the menu any time soon.
Pumpkins do appear in the shops in the UK these days but some people grow them to enter "heaviest pumpkin" competitions, for which there are prizes. The world record for a pumpkin is held by a grower in the US but, considering our short growing season, some very large ones have been grown here.
On behalf of the Piggyfriends, Happy Halloween everyone!!
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