10.31 FORBIDDEN FRUIT

C'est L'Hallowe'en!

One of my favorite holidays. Surprisingly it isn't especially popular in the UK. I suppose this is because they've watered down the thrill of going out in costume with their frequent "Fancy Dress" parties.

Tonight was just another excuse to get ourselves all fancied up.

I have a history of getting hung up on costume ideas, like when I work my age 4-6 tiger costume until I was 12 and my mother had to detach the tail from my back and restitch it to my ass. The pants fit like capris - I was ahead of my time in terms of fashion sense.

Anyhow, this year I repeated a costume idea I'd done a few Halowe'ens back. I was a tree that year. The key was that Casey and Erica were tie-dye wearing granola eating tree huggers. That meant I was smothered with loving all night long - and you know how affectionate I can be.

It wore me out and broke me in all at once.

This year I decided to be a tree once again, simply because I own a pair of brown spandex running tights that make a handy trunk. I was going to grab a set of crutches and be the Major Oak (see http://3sixty6.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html if you dont get it) But my housemates insisted there needed to be a spooky twist to my costume.

The scary factor must be the matter that distinguishes Haloween from the ordinary Fancy Dress. Pardon that oxymoron.

So, I threw a (plastic) serpentine satan around my neck, grabbed a few apples from the yard, and deemed them forbidden fruit. What could be more frightening than the possibility of painful labour and the frightful fashion of figleaf lengerie.

Apparantly it doesn't shake a rotten tomato in her boots.

10.30 ORNAMENTAL SHRUBS

Kat and I might as well have stayed the night in Mapperley. We were up and back in our patch first thing this morning for a tour of the ward with Notts Mayor Mo Munir and our ward cousellor Mike Edwards.

The two cruise the area every month or two to identify problem areas like grafitti that needs cleaning and potholes and such. Thrilling? No. But Mike managed to add a bit of dialogue to the tour by guiding us historically from street to street.

Here he's pointing to a crop of neatly carved out bushes along a public boulevard. The ornamental shrubs were added to this otherwise shanty housing area by a well-intentioned resident. You might say its tacky. You might say he broke the law. But what harm could a bit of landscaping do?

It might actually do a lot of good. I wonder if the gardener guy realises the impact that aesthetic value has on attitude and behaviour.

In the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell uses the example of the NYC underground cleanup a few decades ago. The chief of police at the time tackled rampant crime in the subway by increasing regulation at entranceways and tidying graffitti from subway trains.

Remarkable.

Primping and pruning the shrubs might simply be a hobby for this green thumb. What he might not realize is that he's also doing a lot of good for his hood.

10.29 FRAMBOZENBIER

Kat and I are reporting from Mapperley. We spend our days walking the streets of Ward 5, each of us independently in search of a riveting story for the week. When I say riveting, my mood is ambitious. Without the luxury of the odd press release and in the absence of the associated press feeding ideas, we typically take what we can get.

It's a tedious venture, but that much more exalting when a story emerges. And everybody has a story. Its a truth I learned while walking the aisles of Walmart Stores across Canada as my sister amateur camera person.

After sitting through a lengthy Neighbourhood Watch meeting in our assigned community - from which I emerged with a story about the organizations increasing reliance on technological advancements in light of its aging and reluctant members - Kat and I wandered our way to a nearby pub to unwind over a drink. If only it were as easy to find a story as it is to find a good brew in Mapperley.

In any event, we popped a couple of celebratory bottles of Frambozenbeir - the last two in the pub. Kat took the honour of unravelling the label and uncorking the Belgian beer - she does it like a pro. I, on the other hand, didn't really know where to start.

We sat, contemplating Mapperley but trying hard not to. Sipping slow.

10.28 TIN MAN

...and when he's not eating Welsh Cakes, the tin-man is on a soup diet. This is a peek into Dion's cupboard - he's admittedly not much of a culinary artists (any lack of skill thereof he makes up for in his photographic pursuits). Just the same, it works well since there are already enough cooks in our kitchen to spoil a broth - perhaps even a can of vegetable beef barley broth.

10.27 WELSH CAKES

Dion arrived back from a visit home to Wales.

He brought with him a load of traditional welsh cakes.

If I were Dion, I wouldn't be sharing those.

They are soft and sort of crumbly with a dusting of brown sugar that melts on the tongue. I was instructed (by the experts in the house) to add a layer of butter. I followed suit, but think they taste just fine without.

Its a matter of delish vs decadent I suppose.

They're especially good with tea, as long as you don't mind losing the sugary texture to the bottom of your mug - but cookie crumb-tainted tea is a bother if you ask me.

To sum it up, welsh cakes are right up there with crumpets in terms of inducing a classic pavolovian-effect. Just a minute while I wipe that bit of drool from the corner of my mouth.

10.26 NEWSDAY

Everyday is a newsday. But Fridays are especially so. Fridays are special.
On this day of the week, I am immersed in newspapers, quizzed on the latest stories, reporting from the legendary land of Oxdown, and conferencing with my classmates. I eat lunch with a broadsheet in hand and spend breaks online catching up to BBC4.

Its a 9-5 day. I head to conference with a coffee in my left hand, my right free to practice shorthand while my course director, Dave, goes on about how to peg stories and punctuate paragraph after paragraph after five-sentence-max paragraph.

The best part of the day, aside from lunch, but taking place the hour before - (torture I must say), is NCTJ exam prep. We head to the newsroom, the same newsroom that once housed the BBC. We are given 60 minutes to write a 250 word report generated from a press release out of the wonderful land of Oxdown. Its made up. My stomach growling is real and adds to the pressue. The document is placed on the desk beside me.

The gun goes and we're off.

By the end of the hour, the hunger pangs are long forgotten and all I can think is paragraph, after paragraph, after five-sentence-max, properly punctuated, paragraph. I scan my story for the words "local" and "resident," deleting any trace of those blasphemous terms and submit.

I depart from Oxdown and my brain lands safely back into Nottingham. I'm about to link to www.thisisnottigham.co.uk when my stomach growls. And I'm off. The newsday breaks, but only for a moment.

This is Friday. Every Friday. Every day is a newsday. But Friday is full on.

10.25 APPLE A DAY

An apple a day...my arse.

I've been sick. Sick and tired - or tired and consequently sick, if I can infer causality here. Its a vicious cycle that was begun despite a healthy diet including at least one large, juicy, apple picked fresh off the tree in my backyard each day.

You can argue that I haven't seen a doctor yet. But in this day and age, doctors don't often make house calls (or perhaps they do, in places like Gibraltar), and so there is little challenge to keeping them and their stethoscopes and their lectures on eating five fruit servings away.

If we advance the old adage into the present context, with online health information and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals at hand, I am able to counter the argument and suggest that I have been self-diagnosed with the common cold and followed my own prescription to the chemists for a extra strength supply of Acetaminophen, a life-saver not naturally occurring in the average orchard fruit and in effect a "doctored" up solution to my stuffy nose, cough, and headache.

Consider this a piece of anecdotal evidence (and a lesson to all of you Granny Smith aficionados) that an apple a day isn't gonna do the trick.