Halloween + Guy Fawkes Night = Fire Cracker Craziness!

We weren't sure what Halloween would be like in England now. When Mark lived here Halloween didn't exist. Not too long after he moved when he was 10, his friend Andy mentioned that England was starting to participate in Halloween but not everyone was ready for Trick or Treaters (ie. giving out biscuits and whatever they could find in the kitchen). We noticed shops decorated their windows and stores were selling sweets (candy) and fancy dress (costumes) in preparation for the ghoulish night, but we still weren't totally convinced. It didn't help that no one decorated their house near us and when I placed some decorations up on the actual day (mostly Liam's and Gemma's artwork) locals looked on in amazement - as in, 'decorating your house - how fun and creative'.

Stores were selling out of pumpkins, but not the halloween carving pumpkins we're used to - only the small cooking pumpkins are sold here (at least at shops) and they classify them as medium and large - even though there really isn't much difference between them and they are all small!

Pizza ordered (for the first time, which will be a huge surprise to our Toronto neighbours!), pumpkins carved and all dressed up with our sweets bowl ready for potential kids, we still weren't sure about trick or treating so I texted our neighbour mum friend just to double check. Thankfully the doorbell rang and we opened the door to two girls dressed up as witches, holding out bags for sweets and cheerfully exclaiming "trick or treat"! Thank God, because we had just finally got Liam to put on his "Woody" from Toy Story costume after telling him that no one would give him candy if he didn't wear his costume.

Since Gemma was poorly (not feeling well) she stayed at home with Daddy and gave out chocolates in her Pretty Witch costume while Mummy took Liam out around the neighbourhood. It was a beautiful evening - quite warm and dry - we didn't even need a coat! It was quite dark already since we had changed the clocks back that day (one week earlier than Canada). We left at 6 o'clock and I thought we would have enough time to do all the houses by 7. I failed to consider the number of steps we would have to walk up and down because of all the hills. Many homes either have several steps up or down to the front door. Our home doesn't have any steps so I totally didn't even think of this. I was EXHAUSTED because not only did I have to walk up and down these steps, I had to pick Liam up for some of them too. I also had to ask two different sets of trick or treaters (the two girls that came to our house and some other mums) how to tell which homes are participating because as mentioned earlier, not everyone decorates - some didn't even have a pumpkin!!!!! The Blasphemy! Liam and I decided that if the lights were on, but the curtains were shut then they weren't playing Halloween, but if the lights were on and you could see into their house, then we should check if they were playing. Some homes also had notices on their doors supplied by local Derbyshire police stating they were not participating.

Liam did really well and said "turkey treat" and "happy halloween" at each house. We got home at about 7:20 with a bag of sweets - no crisps (chips), very little chocolates, but lots of actual candy (jellies, lollies, rockets). Liam is used to getting larger sized candy, like bags of chips and cheezies, so he thought his bag wasn't full enough to stop trick or treating. I was surprised that people weren't giving out crisps because people eat them here all the time - most of the crisps at the supermarket are large bags full of the small bags. The locals are also very loyal to the candy manufacturer Swizzels Matlow that's made in New Mills.

All in all, Halloween was a great success!

The following weekend was Guy Fawkes Night, also called Bonfire Night on November 5th, celebrating a dude (Guy Fawkes) who got caught guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder before he could blow up the House of Lords parliament buildings and assassinate the King in 1605. Basically towns put together ginormous, amazing bonfires, and fire works. New Mills had a huge bonfire in High Lea Park on the Saturday, the day after Guy Fawkes with bbq, treacle toffee, candy floss and remembrance day poppy stands and of course, a bouncy castle. We got all bundled up and walked over to the park with the rest of the locals. The bonfire was really amazing, especially considering the town is only of about 10,000 people. Liam liked the fire truck that was on-hand, just in case. The fireworks that followed were great too however Gemma didn't quite think so and got upset at the loud, bangy ones so we made our exit a bit early, but still admired the fireworks as we walked home.

Fire crackers had been on sale in shops for about a month prior to Guy Fawkes and every other night or so we would hear one or two go off randomly. On both Halloween and Guy Fawkes weekends it was just nutty - fireworks everywhere and all night - and we could see them from our house on a hill which was great fun until the kids were asleep and we feared they would wake up. Luckily our neighbour right next door to us did theirs before bedtime. We don't think there are many regulations for lighting fire crackers here - at least not in the country.

Upon returning home from Guy Fawkes one of our neighbours from up the farm lane came by to invite us to their bonfire the following weekend! We had known they turned one of the stables into a micro-brewery and they have six different beers brewing so we just had to go. We even raced back from a family visit in Birmingham (about 2.5hrs away) to get there. They had the 3-B's: Bbq, Beer & Bonfire. The fire wasn't nearly as large as the town's but still quite impressive. They were also lighting paper lanterns and letting them go up in the sky. We were like - this would not be allowed in Canada! Some of the lanterns were very close to hitting the house and the large tree right beside the house as they went up. And they flew around forever and went far away. Apparently they are just more of a nuisance when finding them in a farm field as opposed to being a real fire hazard. And of course, there were fireworks! It was actually just one fire cracker that went on and on. Parts of it were quite loud, but this time Gemma kept her cool. It helped that we were getting a brewery tour at the time so we weren't as close. We met some of our other neighbours' family members and there was another 3yr old boy running around for Liam.

Halloween photos are already on Facebook. Guy Fawkes photos to come.
Another update to come soon with photos from November.

Cheers,
The Nicholson Family

Scotland's NOT Shite...

...as the show "Little Britain" and the movie "Trainspotting" may have you believe.

We embarked on our two-night trip to Edinburgh, Scotland early on the Monday morning of the half-term in October - I know, I know - another late blog post. Our first of three trains was to leave New Mills station at 10am. We took our pram (stroller), a large ruck sack (back pack) and one small luggage for all four of us. From our house, it is about a 20 minute walk to the station so we were thrilled when it was super sunny and the air was crisp. We even stopped off at the bakery for a take-away coffee for the ride.

Being 'foreign', we didn't anticipate just how reee-diculously busy these trains would be during half-term. Our first train was to Manchester and we weren't able to get any seats, but it's really only a 30 minute ride, so no big deal. At Piccadilly station, we were to catch a train headed to Blackpool, but only take it to Preston. Well, we navigated our pram through the station and downstairs to the platform only to find that a million other people were to catch the same connection. It wasn't looking good - there were just too many people and I really wasn't sure we were going to get on with our pram. We had told Liam before we left our house that it was going to be really important to stick together at the train stations, but Mum and Dad should have walked the talk. Mark suggested that he and Gemma (in the pram) go to the next set of doors to get on and Liam and I get on through the doors we were standing in front of. Liam and I got on and started to try to navigate our way to the doors where Mark and Gemma were going to be getting on when the porter outside said that the doors would be closing momentarily. I panickly (I may have just made that word up) looked outside someones window to see if Mark was standing outside the train and sure enough I saw him panickly knocking on the trains windows to find us inside. I think Liam and I pushed aside an older lady so we could get out - like good Canucks, we said sorry just in case. Luckily we made it out in time but I had vivid flashbacks of when I got on the subway at St. Andrew station in Toronto and Mark didn't. This would have been WAY worse. So after that incident, we firmly reminded ourselves that we always need to stick together. We managed to get the next train to Preston leaving just 10 minutes later with a slew of others who also didn't get on the earlier train and even got seats for the 45 minute ride.

We were certain we wouldn't make our connection to Edinburgh because of the new later train and that it was running late, but it seems all the trains were running late and we actually made it. We would have had to wait an hour for the next one, which in hindsight, we should have probably done because we couldn't get seats on this train either. We ended up standing in the corridor where the toilet is with 5-10 others (depending on the stops), plus luggage (theirs and ours), plus our pram for the entire 2.5 hrs! At least Gemma had a seat. It actually went by fairly quickly and the other people with us were quite pleasant. I took Gemma over to a temporarily empty first-class seat to breastfeed her for 20 minutes, but other than that it was the toilet carriage.

Finally in Edinburgh, at about 2:30, we got off the train and walked a mere 5 minutes to our hotel, The Jury's Inn. It was a large enough room for us - we got a double, Liam got a twin and Gemma got an infant cot (supplied by the hotel). We got ourselves sorted and ventured into the city.

Scottish weather is the butt of many jokes in the UK - it actually didn't rain as much as it was supposed to. We also had a few sunny moments however it was mostly grey, making it difficult to take photos with our point and shoot - between the sky and the buildings, it was really grey.

The architecture and layout of Edinburgh are both brilliant (everyone says this here, 'brill' for short). The buildings all show their character and ornate details well with age, and there are lots of tiny alleys in between them linking the streets to each other. Some of the alleys lead to patios for restaurants and pubs. On our first afternoon, we walked to Edinburgh Castle to check it out for the next day and to see what there was to see on the way. Lots of wool, tartans, Gaelic and medieval heritage, scotch, pubs (some of which don't allow families because they are not licensed - like Toronto was at one point with the smoking law).

On our full day in Edinburgh, we went to the Castle first - good call - it got wicked busy shortly after we got in with major queues (line ups). There are great views of the city from the castle (when you can see them through all the grey:)) The castle was used as a fortress throughout history and sits on an extinct volcano. Liam enjoyed the canons. We also went through one of the museums inside the castle and saw the armour used in the past and present. We thought the soldiers may interest Liam - there was a statue of a horse that he liked.


We spent the rest of the day walking around the city - the old and the new. It's kinda like Montreal but Edinburgh's new city is like Montreal's old city. We tried to get Liam to have a nap at the hotel in the afternoon, but it was not going to happen. He ended up falling asleep whilst on his stroller seat and fell off right onto the pavement! (Don't worry, pavement here means sidewalk) Others were startled, but we started to laugh knowing that he had probably just fallen asleep:) Awesome parenting moment, we know.

This city is great for walkers - everything is really close together - train, hotels, city and sights. There were tons of tourists in Edinburgh - and not just Brits off on half-term - everyone. It was strange for us as we have gotten really used to being the only internationals both in our small town of New Mills and even in Manchester.

On our last night we went to a large restaurant and we were the model family - we could tell that young couples near us were watching, noticing how cute and well behaved our kids were and even wished for kids like ours... until Gemma banged her mouth against the table and screamed bloody murder forcing Mum to leave with her, without Dad or Liam or the pram! She screamed pretty much the entire walk back to the hotel. I think we ended up being really effective birth control for some of those young couples that evening! Gemma was fine (thank you dye-free grape infant Tylenol) and we actually went for a late evening walk around the hotel area with both kids and the pram before bedtime.

Only Disappointments: No one just walking down the street wearing a kilt like it's a pair of jeans and Mark forgot to order haggis.


Our trains back were not as busy as on our way there. We only had 2 trains and seats booked for the long train to Manchester. Unfortunately, Gemma fought her nap for most of the ride and accidentally pulled the emergency alarm (whilst with Mark), but what's a trip without some train drama?

Will post soon on Halloween and Guy Fawkes night!
The Nicholson Family.

Photos: Facebook