The Shoat Statements

The last time I really celebrated Halloween was when I was in kindergarten and got dressed up as a fairy. But Halloween has always been one of my favourite holidays. You get to wear costumes, get all spooky, and have good, clean fun.

Then, I was asked to volunteer at a pumpkin carving competition, to which I readily agreed. Without ever having so much as touched a whole pumpkin, let alone carve it.

So on Halloween eve, I made my way over to Church Street, ready to help out. which initially consisted of putting up some tents (didn't think i had it in me to help put up those things!) before I got down to the main event.

There was myself and another girl and twenty five pumpkins, all ready to be gutted and cleaned. So we got to work. Cutting the top off seemed like the more difficult of the two tasks, so I let the other girl handle that while I did the cleaning. Boy, was I wrong!

First of all, I wore a pair of gloves, and had a big ladle to clean the pumpkins, neither of which helped much. The seeds and the stuff you find inside a pumpkin (I have no idea what you call them) seemed firmly stuck to the sides of the pumpkin, and the ladle wasn't having much success. Finally, I had to abandon it and use my hands to do the cleaning which was marginally more successful.

The more pumkins I cleaned, the more fun it seemed, and I was almost unhappy when more volunteers came to help us clean all the pumpkins on time. Eventually, we were done, and could sit back and watch while people carved them for the competition.

The more I watched people carve, the more fun it seemed. Some were rookies, but there were some real pros, who had battery operated pumpkin carvers, intricate designs drawn out on tracing paper - I had really underestimated this whole carving business. By the time I was heading back, I really wanted to carve my own pumpkin! It seemed like so much fun, and after all, this was Halloween, right?

So, on Halloween afternoon, I rushed to the supermarket, and quite literally walked away with the last pumpkin they had. I wore a hideous sweater, sat in the balcony, and started cleaning. Cutting the top off wasn't nearly as difficult as it seemed, and after cleaning around ten pumpkins the day before, this fellow seemed like a piece of (pumpkin) cake.

I was very careful with the carving, not very arty and extremely mathematical. It was not as difficult as I imagined it would be, though it took way longer than expected, and quite a bit of energy (BTW, pumpkins are incredibly heavy. Incredibly.).

I don't think my pumpkin looks too bad - what do you think?