National Jennygraphic: How the Brits do Halloween

Thomas has one word to sum this up – “Badly.”
That’s a direct quote.

I remember when Jess, Mike and I did a road trip from San Francisco to L.A. to Las Vegas for Niki and Darryl’s wedding on Halloween Night, 2007.

I have to say, L.A. puts on one hell of a bash. We ended up going to Universal Studios the weekend before Halloween where they turned the theme park into a big Halloween production. It was hands down one of the freakiest things I’d seen. They had a house devoted to Texas Chainsaw Massacre people could walk through and mingle with Leatherface and other members of the Sawyer family.

The make-up and special effects were amazing. Outside in the theme park, there were these guys with pig faces on, which held chainsaws (sans blade) and kept staring at people in the crowd. For five minutes, never breaking eye contact with me, I finally began walking quickly away.

Everyone was dressed up, it was fantastic.

Fast forward to London on Friday.

I was pre-warned that Halloween wasn’t such a huge deal here, but I kind of shrugged it off. There were a few pumpkins, but not really in residential homes.

I was happy to see some people dressed up around Oxford Circus, but mainly girls were “sexy” versions of things. Suffice to say, there was no “sexy ISIS” or “sexy Ebola nurse” costumes, which in London, they call “fancy dress.”

Bunch of weirdos

Thomas and I headed down via black cab to Tower of London tube stop and made it just in time for the 7:30 p.m. departure of a Jack the Ripper walk. Our animated guide took us to a number of different murder spots of the infamous killer in 1888 in East London.

One of the last stops was at 13 Miller’s Court where we stood in front of a realtor’s office with a red door. That was where fifth and final victim Mary Kelly was found with uterus ripped out, triangles cut out of her cheeks and parts dismembered. Someone should’ve said, “And now, everyone’s getting butchered by high real estate prices in London!” Eh? Eh?

Our guide in Spitalfields Market

So, what did I learn? Basically, Stonemasons were purportedly murderers and streets were dark. And that you could become a ladies man if you purchased a souvenir Jack the Ripper t-shirt mapping out all the locations of the murder victims, containing the killer’s alleged signature?

I wonder what would happen if someone wore that shirt on Tinder – would women say, “Oooh, he looks like a mentally-stable man. I’d love to hook up with a dude who is totally into Jack the Ripper."

Thomas in his Slash Voodoo man costume while we're waiting for the Tube.

Bored Pikachu

Satan eyes

Random double pumpkin

Yesterday was pretty low-key. NANOWRIMO is going well. I guess I am cheating a bit because a lot of my content (old Sun stories, old blog entries, travel journal stories) is already done, but that is what will compile the book, so it's all good, I reckon.

Met up with Angie at Spitalfield's Market yesterday for a coffee and late lunch at Leon. So great to see her and hear everything at CBC is going well with her.

Coffee times are happy times.

Afterwards, a jaunt to the Tower of London, where they have over 888,000 poppies in the Tower Bridge moat.

Poppies at Tower Bridge moat.

The other night, Thomas – who oversees musicians – invited me to a TV taping of Bruce Forsyth's variety show, an entertainer in his mid 80s. Still sharp as a tack. Very British, didn't get many of the jokes, but got to sit in a good seat in a prestigious old English theatre – the Palladium. Thomas showed me where the queen sits, usually once a year, in a balcony under a prestigious crest. I caught a cold on the way over here, but still cleaned up pretty nicely.