Hal­loween has come and gone

Avery is in a stu­por of post sug­ar-high, but not as high as her hair. Yes, her first vis­it to a hair salon, to emerge a mind-numb­ing hour and a half lat­er as… Hol­ly Golight­ly. A dress from Tesco, a tiara from Shep­herds Bush Mar­ket, a cig­a­rette hold­er and gloves from some skeevy online cos­tu­mi­er, all com­bined for quite the best Hal­loween cos­tume ever. There were ful­ly five salon employ­ees hov­er­ing around her and her entire­ly silent hair­do cre­ator Leno, pro­vid­ing bob­by pins and hair spray at the drop of a hat. Passers­by on the pave­ment stopped to look in the win­dows. One of the styl­ists said hes­i­tant­ly to me, “Do you know that man out there? Because he’s wav­ing like crazy,” and there was John, dri­ving by in the Cinque­cen­to to pick us up, late as we were in the ser­vice of Avery’s hair.

On to a fab­u­lous Hal­loween par­ty at the home of one of Avery’s school friends, a plate­ful of the BEST lasagne from Ottolenghi (I am not mak­ing lasagne again until I fig­ure out exact­ly how to repli­cate it: car­rots, for one thing), washed down with Moet et Chan­don. And then chap­er­on­ing the trick or treat­ing in Kens­ing­ton, quite the posh­est neigh­bor­hood I per­son­al­ly have ever can­vassed in search of mind­less amounts of high fruc­tose corn syrup.

There was a four-sto­ry house cov­ered from top to bot­tom by a 40-foot square black spi­der! There was a path­way cov­ered over by arbors of trail­ing ivy in blaz­ing autum­nal col­ors, flanked on either side by gor­geous­ly carved pump­kins (nev­er mind my usu­al child­ish efforts, I enjoy it!). Carv­ings of galleons in full sail, cats with arched backs, fly­ing ghosts, some in that impos­si­bly sophis­ti­cat­ed method that my sis­ter can pro­duce, where your knife does not ful­ly pen­e­trate the pump­kin but skims across the sur­face so the can­dles glow from inside. Scream­ing crowds of tween­ers, lit­tle crowds of gog­gle-eyed tod­dlers clutch­ing at their par­ents’ hands, tiny hand­bag dogs dressed up as uncon­vinc­ing devils.

Back to the par­ty for a home­ly and lov­ing­ly cre­at­ed old-fash­ioned par­ty: Pin the Mould on the Pump­kin, bob­bing for apples, throw­ing apple peels to read the first ini­tial of the name of the man you will mar­ry! Prizes and fairy cakes dec­o­rat­ed with but­ter­flies, a sort of Lucky Dip in Jel­lo, a class­mate as Puss in Boots, a witch in knee-high Fen­di boots, and our own lit­tle Tru­man Capote heroine.

Avery’s now clos­et­ed in the bath­room, remov­ing her bob­by pins. The entire world smells like hair spray. I’m wait­ing out­side in case her head falls off once the pins are all out. All’s right with the world. Hap­py Halloween!