Ashley Smith loses the plot #5
If you were in “The Point” between the hours of one and three on Wednesday afternoon, then you probably couldn’t help but realise that “Pumpkin Carving” was taking place. Apparently it is commonly done around Halloween in which people insert their apparitions onto the skin of said vegetable.
There were several fantastic attempts taken by the brave volunteers at the allotment to carve said pumpkins into something resembling art. I however do not include myself in this category as my attempt of “Pumkinary” didn’t go quite as planned. I spent a good couple of hours taking part in this activity without success. Unfortunately I haven’t got a picture of it because the said pumpkin’s appearance was deemed too awful to be gazed upon by human eyes. What I will say however is that if anybody reading this is familiar with German politics of the 1920s then you will know what I mean when I say it looked like Gustav Stresemann. I use the past tense because it has since been destroyed by a holy man and buried in an unmarked grave. In my defence it was the very first and probably last attempt of “Pumpkin Carving”.
After taking part in this I took a mild interest into the origin of this “tradition” and how it came to be a “tradition” so I did some research. During my investigations I stumbled onto a website you might have heard of, I believe it was called Wikipedia or something. On this trust worthy website, I discovered that the whole thing originated in Ireland and that they were called “Jack-O’-Lantern’s”. They were originally done to ward off evil spirits and any other nasties of the night that just so happened to be dropping by. It then went onto say that they were put out on Halloween because it was the day before November the 1st. The more intelligent of you may already know this but what you might not know is what November the 1st is. Now this year it is a Tuesday, however way back when in days of yore the first day of November was known as “All Saint’s day”. Even I raised my eyebrows at this! I had no idea that band had been around since the fourth Century. It turns out though that I was wrong, it had nothing to do with the band. In fact, it had something to do with Saints and I thought to myself “I’m not going into that”.
After a couple of hours later I continued my research and I found many things that I couldn’t bring myself to understand. For the sake of this blog and the sanity of the reader I will only focus on one of these things and because this is supposed to be an allotment blog it is vegetable related.
Why is it that in a world in which countless people live in poverty and a state of starvation, we find it amusing to take perfectly good food, carve a face into it and put it outside for everyone else to see? I simply cannot get my head around the fact that in the space of sixty seconds of TV there is an advert for a charity asking for donations; only then to be told that your local supermarket is selling three Pumpkins for the price of two and that tis the season to be carving. Aren’t we tired of this? That’s why the hard work the Allotment Team do every week and the produce created and looked after is donated to a local charity called The Friary. Tis always the season to be giving & caring!
Tune in next week when we go back to the allotment and find out what has been causing the riff between pigeons and old Light House Family CD’s!
