Tag Archives: Halloween in Dubai

Read me (if you dare)

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There is a time of the year (it used to be a night, now it’s nearly all month) when expat communities in Dubai become satellite suburbs of the good ole’ US of A.

It starts with a few Halloween decorations here and there, a bush covered in cobwebs, creepy spiders on the wall, and by October 31st morphs into a full-blown horror scene with grave stones and skeletons, strung-up ghosts and ghouls, along roads normally festooned with bougainvillea and desert roses.

Doesn't DH make the prettiest girl? (bottom left)

Doesn’t DH make the prettiest girl? (bottom left)

Last night, as the sun slipped from view behind the white picket fences of our new compound and the pumpkins began to glow orange, the children took to the streets en masse, in fancy dress. They were trailed by their parents, many of whom had made a valiant effort and donned costumes too.

If you saw a blondish mother in a floor-length, gold, Cleopatra outfit with jewels dripping from my forehead, limping along (my shoes hurt), wiping the sweat from my brow (it’s still humid to be walking around clad head-to-toe in cheap polyester material) and completely lost from my kids, then that was me.

When I finally caught up with my 8yo, who waits for this night all year and gets beyond excited about dressing up and getting a massive stash of candy, it occurred to me that I should ask him what he was saying to the people answering the constant stream of door knocks.

“Are you saying thank you?” I asked.

He gave a firm nod.

“And saying trick or treat nicely?” I enquired.

“I tell them, “Give me all your sweets or you’ll die,” he replied, totally deadpan.

“You’re what?” I gasped. “ YOU CAN’T SAY THAT!!!” I felt my heart skip a beat at the mere thought of how this was going down with all our new neighbours.

Stash of sweets: The face says it all really

Stash of sweets: The gleeful face says it all really

A little chat followed that he wasn’t a prankster-gangster, he was a grim reaper and had to be polite – or I’d confiscate all his sweets – and he nodded again before running off into the darkness with his friend-in-crime.

Then there was just the small matter of getting back to our house, in my flowing robes and heels, along a road that felt twice as long as it normally does so I could cool down. “You look like Cleopatra the morning after,” quipped DH, who’d taken his shock of white hair off a long time before and was enjoying a bevvie indoors with his mother (dressed as a 1920s’ Flapper).

All in all, it was wonderful night, full of frights and sights – not least of them DH and myself!

8 ways to confuse trick-or-treaters

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My favourite quotes from Halloweens-past have got to be:

“Could I have money instead?”

And, “I don’t like those sweets. Have you got any other ones?”

[I mean, seriously, do I look like a pick’n’mix store?]

Then this morning, my overexcited youngest son and his best mate sung a little ditty to me:

Trick-or-treat, trick-or-treat
Give me all your yummy sweets! (repeat)

I really hope they’re politer than that when they go knocking on doors tonight, seeking their annual candy windfall.

Screen Shot 2015-10-31 at 15.16.42So, in a tongue-in-cheek spirit, here are 10 ways to turn the tables on the trick-or-treaters:

– Give away something other than candy (bags of sand, empty water bottles, golf balls, packs of oatmeal).

– Get everyone who comes to the door to come in and see if they can figure out what’s wrong with your washing machine. Tell them it makes a strange banging noise and your maid’s away.

– Stick a ‘Beware of the Lion’ sign on your door.

– Install a motion sensor that turns off the porch light every time a festively dressed child approaches.

– Hand out menus to the trick-or-treaters with pencils and let them order their candy by candlelight. Give them a bill at the end. Any complaints – throw your hands in the air, shrug and say, inshallah.

– Answer the door dressed as a dentist and give out toothbrushes. Treat them to a lecture about tooth decay.

– Get about 30 people to wait in your living room. When older kids come trick-or-treating in their normal clothes, say, “Come in.” When they do, have everyone yell, “Surprise!!!” Act like it’s a surprise party.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Halloween for grown-ups

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Every year I do a Halloween post. All about how much fun the kids have trick-or-treating in Dubai. Since this weekend has unofficially been dubbed Halloween weekend here, I’m publishing this post early – and, this year, it’s not about all the fun stuff laid on for the children.

It’s about Halloween at work, for fully grown adults.

So, this morning, I walk out the elevator and see bloody handprints on the linoleum. My eyes follow the scarlet trail to the door and, lo and behold, through the glass I see a body, lying inside the entrance foyer – a wild-haired killer clown (who I later find out is one of the editors) sprawled out on the floor. He’s twitching like a beheaded chicken.

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Stony silence: Sales? Subscriptions?

I, myself, am clutching an axe, borrowed from Son2. Shoving my own hair into a ponytail, I don my mask and brandish my axe, the bones of my knuckles showing white.

I hear the sound of a knife-like instrument on glass.

Scrape, scrape.

(A little bit like fingernails on a blackboard).

Then a blood-curdling scream.

The door opens and the full candle-lit Halloween horror scene is revealed, complete with a knife-wielding intergalactic alien, cackling witches and a (rather sexy) pirate.

Another shriek.

Followed by laughter (heh-heh-heh).

This is clearly going to be no ordinary day at work.

In the kitchen, where I always go first to make tea, there’s a severed hand in the fridge – and though I know it’s not real, I push the fridge door shut firmly, smiling to myself that our workplace has become just like The Office TV show with Halloween gags and pranks.

A few minutes later, the procession of zombies and ghouls filtering into work is joined by a slightly tubby gravestone, who saunters around the office for, oooh, at least half an hour. No-one knows who he is (sales, perhaps?). He does a jolly good job sneaking up behind me, his hands enveloping my neck in a chilling grip as I’m caught unawares.

“But who on earth is he?” I say to my friend afterwards. “Is he going to walk round all day, d’you think?”

(After 30 minutes, it’s becoming quite amusing that he’s in no hurry at all to sit down and do any work.)

He comes back round with treats, and I take a shortbread dismembered finger – still none the wiser as to his identity.

The mystery was only solved later in the day, when we found out he’d been hired as entertainment – a tombstone-o-gram!

Who says the annual revelry is all about the kids?

Mwahahaha!

A sweet, spidery treat for DH (aka the cesspit)

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Tuesday’s image is a photo from Halloween. My DH loves pumpkin pie. While he was away, I attempted to make it, with the fleshy innards of the pumpkin we’d carved. I then got a bit carried away and made raisin-spiders by pulling cotton through to make legs. Yes, there should be 8 legs, but it was 11pm, and I was sewing raisins. Clearly I’d lost my mind! My DH’s verdict: looks like a medieval cesspit.

Tuesday’s image is a photo from Halloween. My DH loves pumpkin pie. While he was away, I attempted to make it, with the fleshy innards of the pumpkin we’d carved. I then got a bit carried away and made raisin-spiders by pulling cotton through to make legs. Yes, there should be 8 legs, but it was 11pm, and I was sewing raisins. Clearly I’d lost my mind! My DH’s verdict: looks like a medieval cesspit.

How many days until … Halloween?

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Look who it is! My friend's teenage daughter carved Elsa from Frozen into her pumpkin. Amazing!

Look who it is! My friend’s teenage daughter carved Elsa from Frozen into her pumpkin. Amazing!

It started on 1st October. “Mum, how many days until Halloween?” Son2 was pointing at the small, orange, smiley pumpkin that marks 31st October on our calendar on the fridge.

I warned him that it was still some way off. After all, when you’re 6 and waiting for a candy windfall, a month must feel like an eternity, and I really wasn’t ready to put Halloween decorations up yet.

By the second week of October, his impatience was growing. “Is it Halloween tomorrow? If it’s not tomorrow, is it the next day? Or the day after that?” In the middle of chatting about something completely different, he’d suddenly take me down a conversational dogleg:

“Can we put Halloween decorations up, pleeeeeaaasseeeee. Mum, MUM, MUM!”

‘You promised!” [said plaintively, looking me squarely in the eye]

So we buckled a few days ago, and in our front garden, where pink bougainvillea climbs frothily up the wall, there’s now a few creepy additions. We planted a skull in the flowerbed, dangled a one-armed skeleton in the porch, propped a gravestone up and draped cobwebs over the bushes – ready for our community’s collective descent into trick-or-treatery at the end of the month. (DH, while on a trip to New York, even sorted the ‘big reveal’ by buying Son2 a new alien costume at a Halloween store.)

But then, I was caught off-guard again today. On a different topic. It wasn’t so much the question: What are you doing for Christmas? Rather, the snippet of information my hair stylist passed on next: “Some of the big brunches are sold out already!”

A fact I can well believe, having also just discovered that the take-away roast turkeys from my local golf club are all booked up – and they’re taking names for 2015!

I’m surely not the only person who hasn’t thought this far ahead? Oh well, at least we’ve nearly nailed Halloween.

The morning after (the night before)

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If there’s a time when our living room resembles a scene from the movie The Hangover, it’s the Friday morning after Halloween.

I came downstairs today to find sweet wrappers strewn around the lounge, several containing half-eaten, sticky candies. Discarded costumes were still in the exact spot they’d been peeled off, and the children, who’d got up far too early considering it was such a late night, were sprawled on the sofa, pale-faced with tiredness and nursing sugar hangovers. If a chicken had wandered by, and pecked at the leftover sweets, I honestly wouldn’t have been too surprised.

Closer inspection revealed that the disembodied neck from Son 1’s headless horseman outfit had rolled across the floor, coming to rest by the TV. I spotted a gloved hand from Son 2’s zombie costume nearby and there was a devil’s fork propped against the bookshelf.

“So everyone had a good night then?” I asked, looking at my bleary-eyed, 7YO Halloweenie, who was holding his head in his hands. (A cold was compounding the sugar crash).

There was a resounding yes – and, I have to say, I did feel quite pleased that our preparations (which, let’s face it, take all month) had paid off.

I love that, on Halloween, our compound descends into collective trick-or-treatery and becomes a distant satellite suburb of the US, with spooky decorations galore. Last night, our wonderful American neighbours treated us to a pre-Halloween warm-up party; then the kids trooped round the streets in costume – gathering in porches lit by the glow of jack-o-lanterns to collect sweets.

Some villas had taken a theatrical approach, with haunted-house music and torches, and there was a witch strung high above G street, flapping gently in the moonlight.

It was a balmy evening, almost a little too hot to be wearing layers of cheap polyester, and our community was out in force – on foot and for a lucky few, drive-by style, in a six-foot trailer pulled by a quad bike.

After the commotion died down, I escaped to a party up the road, leaving DH to get the children to bed, and bringing Halloween to a wickedly fun end.

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The costumes were acquired by DH on a trip to New York earlier in October

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The pumpkin was bought at the fruit n veg market (12dhs, as opposed to the fortune charged by Spinney’s) and the innards were turned into this dish – my first ever pumpkin pie! We carved a watermelon too, which glowed luminous red

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Just some more e-numbers – spider cakes for the children

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But for some, Halloween is as easy as writing a (polite) note and posting it on the door (although they probably had to hide too)

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Halloween in the desert

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Halloween is HUGE in our compound. It started on October 1 with spooky decorations on a few doorsteps, gathered pace as more households draped cobwebs over the bushes and strung up witches, and culminated last night with our community’s collective descent into trick-or-treatery.

To say the children were very excited is an understatement, and having lived in the States for five years, I can honestly say ‘we do’ Halloween* [whispers: I love this holiday! The children will gorge on bucketfuls of candy, I’ll help myself to copious amounts too – and that’s okay!]

Ready to scare: My littlest skeleton

The kids were dressed and ready by 4pm for a Halloween party next door, then, as night fell, we joined the droves of children outside and trooped from door-to-door under a full moon.

And, I have to say, as I accompanied my two skeletons on a balmy evening around streets aglow with jack-o-lanterns, I was really impressed by the wickedness some of our neighbours had dreamt up.

Not everyone takes part (and the rule is you don’t knock at villas with no porch light on), but many families who did get into the spirit had turned their doorsteps into mini Halloween dens – complete with scary sound effects and fiery torches in some cases.

A few highlights for us were:

– The household with the distressed maiden upstairs who dropped water bombs from the window – with a deathly scream

– The wobbly eyeballs (made from jelly and icing sugar) that were handed out in paper cups and made me whimper

– The dog dressed in a skull-and-crossbone outfit

– The drive-by trick-or-treaters sitting in a six-foot trailer pulled by a quad bike

– The ghoul standing in the dark who honestly looked like he could be fake, but then jumped out on me with an axe [insert horror movie screech]

– And the flying witch rigged up high above G street

* It took a couple of years in the US before I got it. Whilst still a learner, I sat at work one Halloween until 5, wondering why everyone was leaving early. Missed a trick there!

Best-dressed dad: We’d only got about 50 yards or so up our road when my friend informed me: “Just to warn you, all the kids are coming away from that house crying!” Our curiosity piqued, we nudged the kids in that direction, told them to be brave and watched (because after someone’s told you that, you can’t walk away without finding out why, can you?). Lurking in the shadows by their front door was the dad, dressed as a four-legged, long-haired monster, and as the trick-or-treaters filed up the path to line up at the door (yes, line up, there were that many out last night), he’d lurch forwards with a growl. Gotta love the crazy things people do on Halloween!