Superstition

 

The tide of rampant consumerism is rising, meaning the queasiness that used to be just for Christmas excess has leaked into many other festivals throughout the year. So much plastic tat, fossilised sea creatures transformed into fake cobwebs adorning front gardens, lurid orange ultra processed synthetic foodstuffs. All this has become such a banal background, accepted as a norm, but every so often you just have to stop in your tracks and notice just how absolutely insane this all is. I am a killjoy old witch, many dusty cobwebs lurk in corners of my house, making me always Halloween ready. Artificial autumn leaf garlands have been in the seasonal aisle since late August. Seasonal decorating is a pleasant idea, a way of marking the seasons, and festivals make life more bearable after all. But with my consumerism-sick anti-fun goggles on, I see how these things are squeezed of joy, monetised and sold back to us. Landfill in waiting.

The storms have blown in and made me cantankerous, my daughter and I limped into the half term holiday, where exhaustion overswept her and she picked up a virus causing a sore throat and banging headache. Last week we queued for our flu jabs together, and when I came home I bottled up a batch of fire cider tonic as a second line of defence. Science and superstition coexist in me, I’m hedge-witching my bets on this one. Every time I make tentative positive predictions or plans I feel myself furtively creeping my fingers towards the nearest wooden item, my maternal grandmother whispering in my ear “Touch wood!”. This is apparently an example of apotropaic or protective magic, warding off the evil eye. As well as links with Christian beliefs of the symbolic power of the wooden cross, it goes back further, to pre-Christian beliefs in Northern Europe and tree worship. Trees are well worth worshipping in my opinion. Years ago a friend gave me a small talisman made from the Glastonbury thorn, a portable opportunity to touch wood wherever I go.

In the run up to Halloween I have found myself thinking of all the symbols that this festival conjures, darkness and death, ghostliness, magic, well-met by moonlight. Last night I watched the full moon through my kitchen window, slowly progressing from behind neighbouring rooftops in the dusk up into the darkening sky, hanging there a bright silver coin to pay the ferryman. In my walks through damp streets I have been counting the black-suited crows, stalking in their funereal plumage, making hoarse calls to each other. Powerful wing feathers outstretched flapping across the sky bring to mind black paper hand prints cut out of sugarpaper, some long-ago school craft activity perhaps. Also memories of when my husband and I were first living together in a first floor flat overlooking a Victorian cemetery. Gangs of crows and their cousins the magpies would line up facing each other on headstones, cawing and chattering mightily, some kind of corvid territory dispute in progress.

A dislocating moment at my local Co-op convenience store yesterday, where sighting yellow police tape at the windows, I briefly wondered if they had been ram-raided again, but no, just more Halloween decorations. There were also fake bloodied handprints, as evoking fictional murder scenes has become entangled with this festival. I wouldn’t mind, but we are in general terrible at discussing death and dying in this country. Perhaps fake murder is easier to contemplate. As my friends and I approach our fiftieth birthdays, there are the first tremors and reminders of mortality. Accidents happen, cancer lurks nestled inside bodies, revealed by routine screening. Loss is the terrible flipside of loving. Another memory surfaces, a bleak post-Covid funeral for my husband’s Nana, a mother, grandmother and great grandmother who lived for nearly a century. Masks were still mandated indoors, gathering was permitted but not encouraged, and so there was no wake after the service. There was no chance to speak of her, to share our memories, tell the old stories, capture her distinct mannerisms and quirks, her love for all of us. So this Halloween, as well as rejecting the tsunami of unnecessary plastic, I will carry out my own private rituals, think of my ancestors and light a candle, as well as having a bowl of sweets on hand for tiny trick or treaters, I’m not a complete monster.

Photo shows an autumn decoration I've made. The plate and tealight holders came from Nana's house, it feels like a good way to remember her. The dry leaves, conkers, gleaming crab apples and alder cones will all become compost when the season passes. This week I read The Names by Florence Knapp, my choice for book group which will meet on Friday. I also started reading The Humanure Handbook, which is a guide to composting human manure and building compost toilets (I'm great fun at parties).