Country walks and Halloween haunts

We all have the walking bug now, so last weekend the A team (i.e the Inverness walkers - it's a bit sad to give ourselves a name.  I will try and come up with something a bit better) headed off to Kent and did a lovely wee walk from Hever Castle to Leigh, a casual 8.8 mile stroll through beautiful, autumnal Kent countryside.

who knew pig teeth were so human like!

Penshurst Place

It was fairly uneventful (apart from a mishap with a wheelbarrow of apples and me being greedy going back for more, and knocking the entire wheelbarrow over and all the apples went tumbling into the street, but asides from that, uneventful...) and accumulated in a hearty roast dinner at The Wiremill in Lingfield - which is a beautiful little pub and I highly recommend.

Lake side setting

Having failed to throw a halloween party of our own this year (I am a bit gutted about this, I had grand plans to turn our humble home into a spooky spectacle including some fake dead men made out of stuffing Marc's old clothes with newspapers and sticking a mask on the face), I ended up at one of Becky's friend's parties.  I REALLY wanted to paint my face after the fun of last year, and went to a party filled with people I didn't know, just to give me an excuse to do it.

Taking my inspiration from the internet, as always, I went for a creepy ventriloquist doll look, and was pretty pleased at how it turned out.  People's reactions pleased me further, with one guy doing a girlie scream in the alcohol aisle in Tesco when he turned and saw me, and another muttering 'that's fucked up' when he went past. Exactly what I hoped to achieve!

The party was weird - an odd mix of people who mostly didn't know each other, an incredibly attractive guy who had no personality, another fit guy who was single and lives down the road but takes drugs, a guy who had kids and a girlfriend but who proposed to me (!!) and some creeps. Everyone got very drunk whilst I stayed sober as I had to drive home the following day.  It was fun but odd, a halloween I certainly won't forget in a while!  Especially as it took TWO AND A HALF HOURS to get home because of traffic and bus diversions, and I had one person fall asleep on me and one person fall off the seat next to me. Oh alcohol.

Banksy

"Meat Cleaver Boy" 

I drove home the next day through very odd fog - it was thick and dense then suddenly bright and sunny, then thick and dense again (appropriate for Halloween I suppose) and had a lovely time at home with the family - Jord brought his girlfriend down and she is super lovely and I am sad we have only just met her! I made homemade banana bread with a toffee topping, but Mum, Jord or Isaac have never had banana bread before and so weren't particularly keen on the texture.  It got a few 'it's a bit like clay' 'you could build a house with it' comments (following on from when I once baked a cake that was a bit dry, and I got comments such as 'it's like the sahara in my mouth' - brothers eh!)

Banana Bread/Brick Cake depending on who you're asking

I finished the weekend on the sofa reading the rest of The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion - it is SO GOOD and I highly recommend it. It had me snorting with laughter on the bus.