On a recent jaunt to London, Rhiannon, Dr G and I went to Highgate Cemetary.

Specifically, we went to Highgate Cemetary East. Admission was £3. I don't know if you have to pay to get into Highgate Cemetery West. Maybe it's free there because the residents aren't as accomplished. Honestly, I'd never got an inferiority complex from a headstone before, but this place was chockers with overachievers - poets, artists, philanthropists, medical pioneers, Iraqi communists. Sometimes all of the above the same time.

But the crowdpleaser at Highgate is the one and only Karl Marx. He gets his own sign at the gate, so if you're a tightarse Scotsman and start spluttering about the fee, your companions can point to it and say, "But they've got Karl in there!"

It's a big whopper of a grave. Karl looks like a jack-in-a-box, stuck and helpless. Sorry world, about Lenin and Stalin et al. As you can see I have no body. I just came up with the ideas, and those dipshits went totally mental with them.

Amongst all the flowers someone had left Karl Marx two oranges. Anyone got a theory about that one?

We’ve been moved for a month now and have finally recovered from the soul-sapping trauma of two trips to Ikea.

It took ages to get the internet hooked up. Gareth being a curmudgeon really relished the return to the dark ages, but after three weeks even he cracked and went over to his folks’ place to check his emails. His father hovered behind his shoulder, explaining how the world wide web contraption worked.

“If you need to find something, press House.”

Haggis, cheese and panini - together at last. But £5.65?!

"Is this how you spell fragile?" Gareth asked.

"Umm... sure."

We're moving house this weekend and so our brains are melting. I'd forgotten how much of a palaver it is - I'd mentally skipped ahead of the part where you're kicking back with a bucket of wine in the new place. But first you have to rediscover dusty lost socks and pack up all the tangled cords from Gadgets of Yesteryear.

(Just a quick explanation if you don't read my other blog: we're in the midst of selling our flat and renting a house. We had initially planned to buy one, but the bank with our savings in it collapsed last month. Long, tedious, and bloody annoying story!)

Packing up our worldly goods has uncovered a few forgotten treasures, such as this handsome portrait that Gareth's pal nicked straight from the wall of a barber shop when they were sixteen:

And this business card that G received at a conference in Bucharest a few years ago. Quality!

My favourite Tweets from election night:

Aside from that time I chased guisers down the street, I’ve not done anything Halloweeny since I moved to Scotland. But this year it was totally spooktastic.

Gareth carved two pumpkins - one for us and one for his Mum’s birthday, coz Mum’s dig the handmade gifts. We dooked for apples at work. Then Hippo played a Halloween gig at a local pub.

As mentioned before, Hippo already had a bass player so Gareth got lumped with the keyboards. At least this give you a great excuse to put on a flowing blonde wig and dress up as the legendary prog-meister Rick Wakeman.

It was bloody hilarious seeing G with hair. He didn’t stop fussing with it all night, tossing it over his shoulders; stroking it with tender absentmindedness; tutting when a rowdy reveller sloshed it with Guinness.

Aside from Rick Wakeman the band featured a pirate, a scarecrow, a terrorist and Australia’s favourite serial killer, Chopper Read. Here’s some footage of the noisy lads at work; they were ace.

The next night we went to a Halloween party. Gareth’s cape and wig were totally destroyed by the night of rock so he hastily assembled a new costume from his bike leathers and a grungy mask and club from the pound shop. He seemed to enjoy the raven locks even more than the Wakeman tresses. I bought a 50p pitchfork and £1 stupid hat that claimed to be devilish but just looked like a demented pilgrim.

Do you remember that shitty, sinking feeling you got at school when you had an assignment that you did at the last moment in a half-arsed manner thinking that everyone else would have the same crappy attitude, but then you get to class and realise everyone has gone all out and used glitter and stuff? That was My First Halloween Party. Everyone put in so much effort; I felt totally budget. There were geishas, zombies, hippies; a disturbing Josef Fritzl and an Optimus Prime. One couple had handmade Rabid Care Bear costumes - they fashioned the heads out of coathangers and cushions and furry fabric then splashed the whole ensemble with fake blood.

Still, I learned a lot from observing the locals this year and will be sure to do things properly next time.

“I don’t really get this Halloween stuff,” I’d told one of my Scottish pals a few weeks ago, “We don’t really do it in Australia.”

“Do you come fae Australia!?” she said, “Ohh. I always thought you talked a bit funny.”

As of today I’m 31. Bloody hell. Dr G gave me a present* wrapped in sandpaper and duct tape! That charmed my pants right off.

Realising at the last minute that we were all out of paper, he was inspired by The Durutti Column’s 1981 album, Return of the Durutti Column, which had come in a sandpaper sleeve. This in turn, according to Wikipedia, was “inspired by a Situationist joke, a book - Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle - with a sandpaper cover to destroy other books on the shelf”.

The duct tape was totally his idea though.

* if you’re curious, he got me the remastered Mogwai Young Team which satisfied the nerd in me and a contribution to the New Camera Fund. Woohoo! If only the compact-somewhat-manual-and-good-in-low-light camera I long for really existed :)