Halloween Holidays

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, spooky movies and parties, dressing up, eating candy, and carving pumpkins. What’s not to love? Too bad Halloween isn’t that big in the UK. But before we get to Halloween we must recap on the last ten days. To sum it up: my feet hurt.  I’m still exhausted from my holiday but it was wonderful, and a few things I’ve discovered: The UK and the continent (as the Brits say) are two very different places, I never thought I liked red wine until I went to Italy, Michelangelo was incredible, eating out for ten days straight is EXPENSIVE, Amsterdam is actually gorgeous, having to pay for ketchup and bathrooms is ridiculous. But I’m back in London on familiar ground in a country where I speak the language and I couldn’t be happier. All the girls in my house plan on watching Halloween movies all day, making some variation of apple cider, and then dancing the night away at a masquerade ball tonight.  It'll be such a nice relaxing day after all our travels. And to put everyone in the mood for Halloween festivities here is one of my favorite pieces of literature:

Round about the cauldron go;

In the poisoned entrails throw:

Toad that under cold stone

Days and night has thirty-one.

Sweltered venom, sleeping got,

Boil thou first I’the charmèd pot.

Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork, and blind-wonrm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth, boil and bubble.

Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf

Of the ravined salt sea shark,

Root of hemlock digged I’the dark,

Liver of blaspheming Jew,

Gall of goat, and slips of yew

Slivered in the moon’s eclipse,

Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips,

Finger of birth-strangled babe,

Ditch-delivered by a drab,

Make the gruel thick and slab.

Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron

For the ingredience of our cauldron.

Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

{IV. I. Macbeth, William Shakespeare}

Happy Halloween everyone!