Halloween

“Where there is no imagination there is no horror.”  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“The Devil got landed with a shitty job, he has to deal with assholes everyday, he's probably bored as hell.” Gerard Way

“If you know your history, then you would know where you’re coming from.” Bob Marley

Halloween is something that I really do have mixed views about. As a country we are losing many of our old English traditions, whether this is good or bad is another debate entirely so I won’t go there. However Halloween seems to be quite an exception to this. I think the reason why Halloween is an exception is since it has adapted over time. Originally Halloween was called ‘All Hallows Eve’ (All Hallows Day is now called All Saints Day and this is used to celebrate the life of every saint and is on November the 1^st.)

Many years ago Halloween was a time for witch hunting and for getting rid of evil spirits possessing homes in your community. Halloween was traditionally a day of getting rid of evil and was supported by the church? Yes, this was a long time ago but I believe that this is still important. For this reason I put the Bob Marley quote at the top of the blog. I think that the origins are still important and it will explain why later in the blog. So as I just said Halloween was originally started by the church! So all you people who are using Halloween as an opportunity to take action against the Church because you believe they are trying to condemn Halloween you are completely wrong, you have completely got the wrong end of the stick. And every priest or vicar who is actually trying to condemn Halloween are much bigger fools than the people who believe this view.

The reason why I decided to write this is last year a couple of idiots decided to “egg” (if you don’t egging is where you throw egg’s at something and it makes a huge mess, maybe these are the people Gerard Way is referring to in the quote above …) my local vicar’s home because the previous year he refused to open the door to trick or treaters. There reason why he didn’t open the door firstly he didn’t believe that it would be good for people to view of him celebrating Halloween. I can sympathise with him here, it only takes one person to say that this is unholy to celebrate Halloween and blow the whole thing out of proportion and pretty soon he would loose everybody’s respect, surely it is common sense for him to protect his role in society by not joining in with this one festivity.

There is no rule saying you have to open your door to complete strangers, infact in modern society it is heavily advised that you don’t open your door to complete strangers. So why should people be taking action and doing vandalism to those who don’t take part in the festivities? I know for a fact that the vicar who had his home egged by a couple of ignorant teenagers was very upset. Also many elderly people are too scared to even have a light on in their house because they are scared of the young people who go around trick or treating and not because of their costumes. Having spoken to some people who feel this way they believe that many people who go to door to door are not taking part in the traditions and are doing it just to get sweets from people. An example of this is an experience of my Grandma’s a few years ago when she offered some sweets to some youngsters (about nine) instead of taking one which would be polite they grabbed half the bag and ran! And they weren’t even in costume! (Well if you count a black coat done up above their mouth, a black hat covering their head and black tracksuit bottoms a costume then you can consider about a quarter of Penwortham in costume all year round!) Considering this is a mild example of some which I have been told about I can fully understand why people don’t open the door to trick or treaters.

Another thing I don’t understand about Trick or Treaters is how their parents can let a five year old out alone in the dark to go around to knock on strangers doors! What if one house they knock on belongs to a paedophile? Do they not have a conscience or care for their children? And I am not using an extreme example I have witnessed this myself twice last year! Also is Trick or Treating what Halloween was originally made to be about? Does fit in with the original ideas even? I would say no, I believe that this is the part of Halloween that turns the festival often in to a mass event of human greed rather than a celebration.

And recently young people have Britain have got bored of Trick or Treating and created “mischief night”. This is something that actually makes me angry. The idea of pulling pranks on your friends is fine, if it is in good humour. However when young people are going around letting peoples car tyres down, setting peoples bins on fire, posting dead animals through peoples letter boxes, egging peoples houses and other such acts, then I am sorry this is not mischief. It is vandalism! Clearly there will be a point where you get too old for trick or treating since when someone comes to your door about 6ft tall you are not going to give them sweets are you? There are alternatives to Trick or Treating such as Halloween parties, here you still get the fun of dressing up and whatever people do for Halloween (plus a party which would be awesome) and you don’t upset or cause criminal damage (unless you hold a bad party which could involve this…) surely in most cases this is a win win! I am pleased to say that teenagers appear to have common sense since I know many people who have spent the weekend at Halloween parties as described above (apart from with lots of alcohol…) so there will only be a few going out tonight Trick or Treating which is a good thing.

Another good thing about Halloween is people are using their imagination and creating some great costumes. I have seen quite a few awesome pictures on Facebook and other places of people dressing up which I think is great since it brings out a Carnival like atmosphere which is great. Which is why I put the Arthur Conan Doyle quote up above since after all people using there imagination is always a great thing. Also the entertainment industry have been very imaginative this year with some great Halloween games such as the zombie story feature for Red Dead Redemption which my brother has been playing all weekend. I can’t decide if this completely kills the whole idea of Red Dead Redemption or is infact awesome but needless to say it looks like quite a fun game! (Oops the gamer inside me just escaped!) Also other games also zombie themed have appeared this year especially and really has impacted on Halloween this year, I don’t know how zombie’s fit in to Halloween origins which are slowly disappearing which is sad in a way since we do need remember old folklore such as witches since it is part of the history of our nation but still change makes history and if change didn’t happened we would be living in the backward ages. I would like to see in the future traditional Halloween ideas like Ghosts and witches mixed in with modern day Halloween creatures like zombies and vampires (not Twilight ones though, they just suck…)

You may be wondering what I am doing for Halloween, well I suppose the answer is this blog and hoping someone comes to the door who asks for a trick or a treat, since I have quite a good trick in mind! To be honest I quite like Halloween but I think in recent years many problems which have occurred have spoiled the whole celebration. And I imagine this year will be the same with articles which will be written for the newspapers and actions that some stupid people will probably be out committing tonight.

On this slightly depressing thought I wish you a happy Halloween and hope you have a good evening doing whatever you are doing.

Chris :)

My War Against The Anchor

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.” Winston Churchill

On Thursday I began a bit of a war. Actually that isn’t true they started it! The Anchor pub in Hutton previously have never given me any hassle. I was under the general impression that they were reasonable people who were happy enough to let people park up on their car park for five minutes while they pick up their kids from school. However today they decided to try and stop people, but I have no problem with this since after all they have to the right to since it is their property and they can stop people parking there if they want.

However they also decided to cross the line slightly and have a go at people who were not parking on their pub car park. Once again as long as they have a genuine reason to express their anger then feel free to but someone who is stood one meter in to their car park chatting to somebody is not affecting them at all is it? However once again it is their right to not allow people to stand on their land. However surely a shop keeper wouldn’t ask someone to leave a shop just because they are not buying something, surely they would take the opportunity to try and make a sale by advertising their products to the potential customer. However the pub evidently like their customers as much as Bernard Black and decide to scare them off, if that’s the way they like to run their business then fair play, but really one meter if that on to their land from the pavement, that’s a bit pedantic don’t you think and I think the pub’s security runt got what he deserved when he challenged me.

I can’t remember every word of what this bearded full said exactly but I remember he started the conversation with “Are you lost?” which I think is a really stupid thing to say especially when I am stood next to someone chatting to them. I don’t have a problem with people asking stupid questions, some people are to put this bluntly stupid, as a result of this when they ask question it will be a stupid one. However when someone asks me a stupid question in a rude and patronising manner this does annoy me. I think I ignored him the first time he asked but then the second time I think answered with a “no” and then did that thing with my face when somebody says something quite awkward. It is sort of like a muscle spasm of the face but I don’t suppose it is particularly relevant!

He then began shouting at me despite being about two meters away, mentioning something about me standing on private property. It was a complete rant and if he was any closer my face would have been barricaded with his spit. After he had shut up I replied in a calm tone, “And is this hurting anybody?” he turned red like a tomato and I was half expecting another rant from him. But instead he came out with a very profound question, “How would you like it if I was stood in your garden?”, really is that relevant I am stood on his car park (infact it isn’t even his, he is just some moron the owners have employed!) away from all the cars so people can get passed on the pavement. Also not to mention he completely ignored the question I asked him, however out of politeness I decided to answer his question. So I said “As long you weren’t stood on the vegetable patch then I wouldn’t be too fussed if you were.”

Unfortunately this answer seemed to only upset the guy even more! He then began trying to explain to me how metaphorically this car park was his “vegetable patch”. I couldn’t see his point at all and I think I may upset him when I spoke mid-drift of his “Philosophical explanation” by asking how is tarmac was growing! A rendition of the following nursery time may well have been well timed at this moment:

Mary, Mary quite contrary,

How does your car park grow?

With lots of cars and smoked cigars.

And parking lines all in a row.”

Sadly I wasn’t fast enough to come up with this on the spot and if I had said this to him I imagine his fist would have soon been heading towards my face since I was beginning to make him pretty mad. However the situation didn’t result in violence (I reckon I could have had the guy in a fight anyway…) since the manager had noticed there was some trouble and she had come to see what was going down. She came over and asked (slightly more calmly than the security numpty) what was the problem was and I tranquilly explained that I was only standing here for convince sake so as not to get in the way of any pedestrians.

I was quite unsure who’s side she would take, I knew I had put over a better argument than my new best friend but I guessed she would support her staff especially since legally speaking I was in the wrong, which she immediately pointed out. However I did have a reasonable knowledge of the law and pointed out that until she showed me a legal document showing she owned the land ie a deed then I didn’t have to move. She seemed quite unwilling to show the deed saying that it wasn’t necessary to show me the deed which I countered with that therefore it wasn’t necessary for me to move.

There was a moment silence in which I thought of another good point to put across. I asked her if she realised that by asking people to leave her car park (which would be empty if they weren’t there) was impacting negatively on their view on the pub. She just shrugged. So I continued by saying that since the car park was virtually empty instead of sending these people away she should be treating them as potential customers and maybe promoting the pub to them possibly by handing leaflets to them. Clearly she didn’t like to be told how to do her job, since she snapped at me saying: “You have a lot to learn son, and you clearly think you are it, but let me tell you aren’t you just aren’t.” I stood there until she finished and then said the thing she was least expecting to hear, “I completely agree with you.” She flinched like I was about to hit her. I noticed that my lift had arrived at the other side of the road so with the final words I said, “It was very nice meeting you but I am afraid I have to leave now. Good luck with your car park clearing mission!” I said politely and then smiled and walked off.

As I left I heard the woman comment saying: “He clearly has a lot to say for himself” (her fellow staff member applied with a low pitched grunt, which I think sums the guy up to a T) I completely agree with this woman, I do have a lot to say for myself and I think this a good thing. Take for instance every person who is considered to be great who has every lived they have old expressed their opinion. For example Jesus (and no I am not trying to compare myself to Jesus before anyone asks, since would be very arrogant of me since I am neither perfect nor a miracle performer.) He expressed his views and people gathered to listen to him. If he hadn’t had a lot to say then he probably would have been a carpenter just like his farther and the world we live in today would be such a different place since I doubt Christianity would have ever occurred without him being born, anyway whether he lived or not is another question for another blog!

Also take for example John Lennon, if he hadn’t expressed himself through his music and had a lot to say about the state of the world then the world would never have been touched by his music and his views then I doubt the music industry would be the same. See my point? Every person who is considered to be great has expressed themselves some how be it through speech, art, music or any other thing they can. If you can think of any great person who didn’t express themselves please tell me in the comments since I would be quite interested to know if there are any! What I am trying to say is that for the youth of today to be successful then we need to have voices! We need to tell people want we think, we need to stand up and be heard whether our opinion be right or wrong if we don’t have a voice and make mistakes then we will never become great. Do we want to remembered for the generation that did wouldn’t voice it’s self?

I urge anyone reading this who feels they can make change little or small to voice their opinions since young people really need to be heard and not be intimidated by people who think they are bigger and better than them, this last week has really opened my eyes and so many people are just being pushed around by adults who think they are better than the youth of today. I am not trying to lead an uprising and course anarchy or anything like that I am just trying to say just because some one is older than you, that doesn’t mean they are older or better than you. If they think they can walk all over you show them wrong stand up to them and challenge their views.

However I also urge you not to do this against people who are trying to help you such as teachers since they do tend to be right which I have learnt from experience. Furthermore screaming and shouting doesn’t get your point across it just makes you look like a tit. If you are going to argue keep calm and you will find that people actually listen to you when you speak in a composed tone.

 I discovered this Friday morning when walking to school when a parent parked their car up and approached me and told me that she had heard my argument with the Anchor Pub. She told me she agreed with everything I had said and that “I was a credit to my generation” and that more people should express their views and that what I said was said in a very professional way. This is what made me right this blog post. Her praise makes me believe that I am on course to reach one of my goals for this year (see my previous blog post), I believe the fact that what I said influenced the woman enough to stop her car and speak to me is evidence that I am changing the view of the youth of today already.

 However to quote R.L. Stevenson: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” I realise that with my views may have also hurt people such as The Anchor staff by reacting to their challenge in the first place but I take comfort in the Winston Churchill quote at the top and I agree with the quote you are always going to make enemies there are oppositions to everything you or I will do. As a result of this I am not going to back down and if they want a war they can have one and I am very sure that our first battle was a victory to me. I was hoping I could email them a link to this blog since I believe any company should receive feedback so they can learn how to improve. Sadly it appears they don’t have a website but the first thing I found when googling “The Anchor Hutton” was quite interesting it appears I am not the only person who have had trouble with these people.  

Anyway, thanks for reading and please tell me what you thought of this blog post by either commenting below or emailing me, my email is octopusox@gmail.com hope you enjoyed reading it.

Chris :)

17 Things I Wish To Achieve While I am 17!

 18/10/2010

I have been toying with the idea of writing a blog for too long now but last night I realised I really want to write one. It was my birthday yesterday and I had an absolutely awesome time (I will do another blog post about that later…). But one moment that really stood out for me on this birthday was speaking to a friend who I really don’t see enough off; he really, really inspired me. He told me to pretend that I will die on my eighteenth birthday and live this year like I would if that was the case.

Yes that may seem corny and clichéd but there is more! He also said to set myself some goals to achieve over the year and to tell people about them so people would ask me about them and would repeatedly inspire me. I wrote down last night all the things I really wish to achieve and there turned out to be 17 goals, hence the title “17 things I want to do while I am 17.” I decided to act on the 17 goals today at college and half way through my first lesson (R.S) people were already noticing the change in my attitude. It seemed to be working although I think the effect loosened off over the day but still it’s a start, a good start too.

Also I have a lot of stuff I need to get across and if I do die this year at least I will have got some of these things across in this blog. Which is some thing I really want to do and is one of the “17 things I want to while I am 17” So yeah, enough rambling so  here in no particular here is what I hope to achieve in the next year…

1)      Write a blog. Yes this is the blog but I would also like to keep it going throughout the year and beyond. Hopefully somebody will read it and if you are reading it leave me a comment otherwise I won’t have a clue if you are reading this blog or if nobody is! So I have sort of done this one now, but I want to continue it for a while longer before I can tick it off my “magic list”.

2)      Learn to drive. What do you think of when you think about turning 17? I imagine you think about learning to drive. Over the year I want to learn to drive. I was going to try and have my first lesson this week, but it was just too short notice so I have booked my first one for November 13^th, this seems ages away but it would have been sooner if I wasn’t going to Venice… So yeah hopefully over the next year I can learn and then past my test. Most people I have talked to about learning to drive (Oliver) claim that I will be rubbish and crash all the time, so no pressure!

3)      Make the most of the WSJ Jamboree. This summer I am going to Sweden on the World Scout Jamboree and I want to make the most of this, I spent the last weekend with the people I will spending a lot of time with this summer and they are all awesome! I can’t wait for it; I will post a blog solely about this in the next few days since I have a lot to tell you about it! So this year I want to make the most of the Jamboree since undoubtedly this will probably be the greatest trip of my life!

4)      Write a novel. Yes that is write I want to write a novel or should I say finish writing one! I started a few months ago writing it after planning out what I want to say in it. That is all I am going to say for the time being but I do need somebody to proof read some of what I have written for me so if you would like to help and get an early read of it please email me at: octopusox@gmail.com thank you! Also keep you eyes peeled since I want to post a few sample chapters on here in the coming weeks.

5)      Learn to play acoustic guitar better. Well I already can play guitar but over the last few years my acoustic guitar skills have vanished and I played an acoustic for the first time in a while this weekend at the campfire and I have realised how much I miss it so I am going to relearn it all I hope and get better over the coming year. And this one sort of links with the next goal I am setting…

6)      Record some of the songs I have written. Over the last years I have been writing a lot of songs but despite encouragement from loads of people I have never got round to recording them, so this year I will record them and when I do I will post the recording on here some how…

7)      Do well in my exams. I am now at college studying: History, ICT, Psychology and Religious Studies (Philosophy and Ethics). I have exams in January and in the Summer sometime and I hope to do well in them, my ALPS are B, B, C but I hope to get quite a bit better than that, so this year I want to do well in my AS’s and basically study hard but not let it hinder all my other goals.

8)      Get a girlfriend? This is one thing my friend who I spoke to last night suggested I set as a goal; he described me not having a girlfriend as “Being the missing piece to my puzzle.” Personally I am not to sure about this but I suppose it is something I have been putting off for too long, so I will put some serious thought in to this one before trying to get it ticked of my list I think I will have to take some time and not rush in and think about what I do very carefully especially since this one particularly involves somebody else’s feelings. This may be the hardest goal on my list, by a very large margin… But it will definitely be interesting!

9)      Do a random act of kindness everyday. For the whole year I am going to try and do a very random act of kindness everyday and keep a record of what I have done to look back on at the end of the year. I may post some on here but I am not certain yet. Today’s random act of kindness was dropping my study period to go and search for my friends lost cat. Despite my hatred towards cats (I am allergic to them!) I really wanted to help him find it since I could tell that this lost cat was bothering him. Anyway after the walk to his house we soon found the cat was sat there waiting for him in his garden so despite the fact I did very little searching I still think it should count as today’s! So everyday I hope to do a random act like that for the rest of the year and hopefully this will slowly make the world a better place!

10)  Become a Scout Leader. I have been a beaver leader for three years now and I think I need a change so this year I hope to become a scout leader (once my brother has moved to explorers, it would be havoc with him there still!) and once there I hope to have a great time and create many great experiences for the people involved just like the leaders made many great experiences for me when I was in Scouts.

11)   Stay true to myself job-wise. Basically I believe that I shouldn’t do a job unless I would be happy to do it for free (very communist like I know…). This is why I want to become a teacher once I have finished my education since I would happily do this for free! So this year I don’t want to be pushed in to getting a job I don’t want to do. I don’t think I have explained this particularly well but I will try and explain it better in another blog post since I have quite a bit more to say about this…

12)  Embark on a sea bound sailing voyage! No I don’t want to become a pirate but I do want to sail on a big boat on the sea. This summer my parents and brother are going away to the Mediterranean again but I have decided not to come this year I am hoping that in this time I can sort out doing some sailing on the sea which is something I have wanted to for ages. So hopefully I can spend a week or so out at sea, I have seen an opportunity already so hopefully I can involved with this voyage which is from Amsterdam to Ipswich. I will keep you posted about how applying for this goes…

13)  Have many more great days out hiking. This last year I have spent some great days out doing the three peaks of Yorkshire challenge and also climbing Mt Snowdon plus many others. This year I hope to climb more mountains and have many more great days out in the awesome countryside.

14)  Make more progress towards becoming a Sailing instructor. This past year I have become an assistant sailing instructor however in the coming year I want to make some progress being actually doing an instructor course or just being an instant instructor on courses. Teaching people to sail is something which I really enjoy and hopefully I can make further progress this year.

15)  Change peoples view of “The Youth of Today”. Young people really do get some really bad coverage in the media however this year I want to spread the news of all the good news that young people are doing and try and persuade people that young people aren’t just hooligans as suggested by the media. I hope to challenge the media directly on this problem and work with them to promote all the good things that young people are doing. The first step for this will be to contact my local paper “The Lancashire Evening Post” so starting from there, lets see what happens. I will try and keep you all informed with what I am doing since this is quite a hard task I think.

16)  Randomly help a homeless person directly. This is something I want to do, quite selfishly to prove to myself that I can through small impacts change the world even if it is for one person by buying them food so they can eat. I suppose this could come under “My Random Acts of Kindness” but I think that this is different since it isn’t a random act it is a planned act where as the random ones aren’t planed they are just impulsive acts. I would be hoping to spend £10 on the person I choose to help which may not seem a lot but considering how broke I am it is quite a lot for me! This one should be quite easy but it is something I really want to do.

17)  Live to the age of 18. I want to live to the age of eighteen since I think if I die in this year it will mean I won’t get to help many people who I plan to help and also believe it a lot selfishly I quite like living. But I guess if my numbers up there is not a lot I can do. I suppose it would be quite nice to have lived to that age at least....

So these are the seventeen things I wish to achieve, if you think you can help me please email me at: octopusox@gmail.com Also please give me feedback about what I have written on this blog, be it in person, by email or commenting on this blog, I guess I would like to know if someone has read it and what they think since this has taken me a long time to write! So yes once again and thanks and I hope you are all part of everything positive I achieve in my life as a 17 year old!

 Thanks for reading.

 Chris :)