It's well under way now. Luckily the weather has stayed dry for us, and the bonfire is blazing merrily. Mr Penry, covered in smuts, is happily stoking the fire, inbetween playing his 'Seated one day at the organ' game. This has proved remarkably popular and we shall soon run out of whiskey, but not to worry, this is where the magic comes in and I shall just conjure up some more.

The bats have been pretty good so far, just the odd swoop or two, and the owls have been hooting like there's no tomorrow.

There is a line of apples hanging in the trees and the guests have just started having some food. I have joined in the fun with bobbing for apples in a bowl of water and if I find out who held my head under for ten seconds there is going to be trouble....

Mr Sarcophagus Jones has declined to join us, citing an acute attack of common sense, while Mrs Anubis Evans has her own cauldron to stir. Mog the Brick has put away his trowel and his cement mixer on the grounds that eggs play merry hell with his mortar...

There is a nice little area where you can do spells if you wish, and a wishing well where you can do wishes if you want.

The only blip so far is that Barney has, unbenknown to me, discovered the whereabouts of the toffee apples. I have scraped off most of the drool and thrown out the ones that look nibbled, but otherwise they're okay and if anyone would like one I have put the box on the bench near the window.

There is some scary story telling down near the stone circle - this is a great part of Halloween and not to be missed. Mr Penry has done his best to clear all the grass but do look out in case Barney has left any surprises about. You'll know if you tread in one. Tissues and a torch are available at the back door of the kitchen.

Anyone who would like to perform a pagan ritual is recommended to go up on the back terrace where it is dark and suitably spooky. There is loads of incense and a stock of logs up there for burning. Just remember to dowse the bonfire before you leave!

I think that's about all at the moment! Please let us know what you're doing at the party!

A couple of people have asked me what on earth the game 'Seated one day at the organ' entails. So I shall attempt to explain.

This is a game we devised when the children were little to amuse them. (Responsible Adults with no children in tow may add copious amount of whiskey/cider etc inbetween games. It is not compulsory but it does make you fall over more quickly.)

The game gets its title from Sir Arthur Sullivan's song, 'The Lost Chord'. Everyone begins it sitting down, and recites the first two lines of the song:
"Seated one day at the organ,
I was weary and ill at ease...."

The idea is that as you recite the lines so you do the actions - first by standing up, then sitting down while saying 'Seated'; then playing an imaginary keyboard for 'organ'; yawning and stretching while saying 'weary' and looking around nervously for 'ill at ease.' Depending how quickly you move (or how slowly you speak) you may not be able to fit everything in.

This is repeated (endlessly) getting quicker and quicker. Now you can see why the addition of alcohol could add to the 'fun'. For some reason our kids really loved it, it just got madder and madder....

A bit like me, really!

Well, the party preparations are done and all is ready here in Blogland. Since this is a magical party, it doesn't matter what time you drop in today, everyone will still be here.

THere is plenty to eat (veggie and non veggie) in the form of sausages,jacket potatoes, soup, toffee apples, parkin, gingerbread, sticky toffee pudding.

There is plenty to drink, including hot chocolate, cider, lemonade, cider, fruit juice, cider, and whiskey. You will all receive a courtesy broomstick to fly home on, so no problems with the breathalyser!

THere is a BIG bonfire courtesy of Mr Penry.

There will be traditional Halloween games - ducking and bobbing for apples, divination, plus Mr Penry's own invention "Seated one day at the Organ...."

We shall also sit in the dark and tell spooky stories in the hope of actually scaring someone s***less.

I'll see you all later!

Brightest blessings
Tylluan

One of the strange things about learning to do magic is that the better you get at it, the less you need to do it. I’m not quite sure why this should be, although I suspect that magic is something most of us have at our fingertips. Maybe as we become more skilled it becomes as natural as eating or breathing, and we just don’t have to make a conscious effort to do it.

I’ll bet there are a few of you reading this, shaking your heads and thinking, ‘Not me. I couldn’t do magic. I’ve never tried to do it either.’

Hands up which of you have ever thrown a coin in a fountain or pool? I don’t know what it is about water and coins, but the two seem to go together magically. This fact is exploited by charities that often set up a Wishing Well as an express means of collecting money for good causes. But I’ve also enough garden centre ponds containing coins to be certain they didn’t get there by accident.

Commenting on my post about spamming yesterday, ArtemisToxia mentioned the practice of hexing in the ancient world. One way was throw a lead tablet, inscribed with a hex, into a pond or well. For less negative magic, people threw coins – and made a wish.

In ancient times this was a common form of folk magic. Most wells, springs and ponds were sacred and had some deity or nymph associated with them. Casting a coin – something of value - into the water was a way of making an offering and doing a deal with the deity to ensure your wish was granted.

Coins are a form of votive offering, a way of catching the attention of your particular deity. Remember when the old London Bridge was dismantled in order to ship it out to Arizona? Thousands upon thousands of ancient Roman coins were found beneath it in the Thames riverbed.

So even if you’re not in the habit of doing magic, carry a few pennies with you and next time you’re close to a pond, river, or even the sea, cast one in and make your wish.

I hope it comes true for you!

I haven't had much chance to write another post today. It's just been one of those days and I've been catching up on a few things.

With luck I shall be back tomorrow!

This is a warning to anyone spamming my blog. I WILL hex you.

I came across this little gem while looking for local Welsh news on the icwales website. Apparently, ‘signed off by the Home Secretary’ (what the hell does that mean exactly?) about 800 organisations are going to have the right to see anyone’s mobile phone records without first getting permission.

Think about it. EIGHT HUNDRED ORGANISATIONS! Could you think of even twenty organisations who might reasonably need such information? The police. The... um... Yes, the list runs out pretty quickly, doesn't it?

Even if you’re the Napoleon of Crime, there aren’t that many organisations who need to know whether you are going to pick up Aunty Blod from the dentist or be late home.

And it’s all being done to ‘fight terror.’ No, it isn’t. It’s being done to feed the endless cancer of bureaucracy and power hungry little tyrants that seem to be running this country.

I mean, where did you see in any party’s manifesto the line ‘Oh, and by the way we are going to make everyone feel much safer by checking your phone records?’

No, I thought not.

And I’m sick of hearing ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide then you’ve got nothing to fear.’ Yes we have. We ought to be terrified of the criminal, the deranged, the downright bloody malevolent who are going to get their hands on such information.

It can happen. It does happen. Doctors and nurses have deliberately killed or harmed patients. Policemen have turned out to be more corrupt than many of the criminals they arrest. Priests have been paedophiles.

And nosey parkers on the other end of a phone tap will go insane with a power they never should have been given in the first place.

Okay, rant over. You can come out now.

One thing you never seem to see in films featuring St Bernards is the sheer amount of mess they can make! Today it’s raining heavily, I am trying to keep the dogs indoors (with the run of the back yard, which isn’t a bad size) but away from mud, leaves etc., for the sake of my sanity.

Of course, most St Bernards love the water: rivers, the sea, canals, you name it, they want to be in it. And they just love being out in the rain.

Their footprints are like tea plates. They can stand over 6feet tall when they want to. That means that nothing – nothing – is out of bounds to them. They are also gloriously inquisitive and childlike.

So when they saw a nice hanging basket out in the yard, they decided it would be fun to play football with it. And then tug of war.

The result is that while I am in another room working, they are having the time of their lives in the kitchen. And it’s all done silently. All I can hear is the odd yawn, maybe a wistful sigh. And beyond the door of the back hallway they are Beckham, or Pele or George Best, dribbling (literally!) up and down, round and round…

The mess was indescribable. I nearly cried. I mean, they tried to be good, they thought I’d be pleased that they played indoors and not out in the rain.

I stood there, ankle deep in mud, basket liner, grotty bits of plant now mangled beyond recognition and was met by three pairs of eyes – big, brown, eyes that make you feel you’ve just kicked Bambi if you raise your voice to them. (I should add here that Homer’s eyes are green. They are neither soft nor doe-like, they are shrewd and appraising. He probably masterminded the whole caper.

Anyway, I’m off to clean out the kitchen. I’ll catch up with you all later!

Well, on this subject I began by talking about holly berries, and then mentioned how the Bewick swans had arrived early at Slimbridge. Now the Sunday Telegraph reckons that the arrival of large numbers of finches could signal a harsh winter ahead. Apparently six hundred have been spotted upon in the Isle of Lewis whereas normally you'd be lucky to see just one.

You can read the story here : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=ZQYNTUHDQQPMVQFIQMFCFFOAVCBQYIV0?xml=/earth/2007/10/27/eabird127.xml

So maybe I was onto something, eh?

Or maybe they've heard about my holly berries....

After my last-but-one post I was really starting to worry about all things electrical chez Penry.

Then I came upon this little gem :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=490069&in_page_id=1770

In Sicily (can’t be that far from Wales, now can it?) toasters and TVs and even furniture have apparently been exploding or malfunctioning on a regular basis for years now. Worse, some even caught fire.

Experts came from all over the place to investigate. The locals thought it was supernatural, while the Vatican reckoned it was demons on the lose.

It got so bad there was an official investigation by Sicily’s civil protection department. says the most likely cause is 'aliens testing secret weapons'.

Well, now the results are in folks. The cause? Aliens. Testing secret weapons.

My part of the planet is well known for its flying saucers, mysterious large black cats and other ghostly phenomena.

But why target my house???

Here I am… just gone ten o’clock in the morning sitting at my desk. It is dark outside, the clouds are a uniform shade of grey. It is raining. The dogs are bored and eating Hob Nobs.

My knee has seized up. It is not only painful but bloody annoying. There are so many things I want to do today. To cap it all, the internet is going at a snail’s pace and giving me strange messages. When I tried to log on to Blog.co.uk I was told it wasn’t available. Even when the internet came back on and worked for everything else, Blog UK's pages would not load. Weird.

There is definitely something in the air at this time of the year. Our ancestors recognised it, marking it out with festivals of the dead in many cultures and many countries. But why a festival of the dead? What does it mean?

Have you ever really thought about those old fashioned turnip lanterns? Now that pumpkins are more readily available you don’t see them so often nowadays, and besides, they were hellish hard to carve. To get a swede or turnip big enough meant it had the texture of granite, and I can remember spending an entire day once just trying to scoop out the centre. Pumpkins are a doddle in comparison.

But by changing over to pumpkins we have lost the essential meaning of the Halloween lantern. For pumpkins grow above ground, and Swedes and turnips grow in the earth.

Thereby lies the symbolism. Things that are dead are buried; they lie in ground. We dig them up, carve faces on them, put lights in them. We give them life in other words. It’s quite appropriate for a festival where we are really celebrating the principles of life, death and regeneration/rebirth.

It’s very easy to miss these important symbols, particularly now that Halloween has become so commercialised. I love the festival, always have done, but it’s important not to lose track of its meaning.

There’s more to Halloween than sweets and egg throwing. The veil between this world, and the Otherworld (or otherworlds, depending on your point of view) is thinning out. We are almost between worlds – a very magical place to be.

Why this should be I really don’t know. Is it because there’s something inherent in the air at this time? Or is there some other reason? Something organic in the earth itself that triggers the shift?

I find it’s important this time of year to spend some time just thinking, being quiet and watchful. A bit like switching on the radio between programmes and waiting to see what comes on. Sometimes you can be very pleasantly surprised!

The toll of ruptured appliances continues to rise. THe other day it stood at a mouse, keyboard, cd player and clock.... now the microwave has died a death....

What's going on? I reckon the place needs some spiritual cleansing tomorrow.

The toll of ruptured appliances continues to rise. THe other day it stood at a mouse, keyboard, cd player and clock.... now the microwave has died a death....

What's going on? I reckon the place needs some spiritual cleansing tomorrow.

The toll of ruptured appliances continues to rise. THe other day it stood at a mouse, keyboard, cd player and clock.... now the microwave has died a death....

What's going on? I reckon the place needs some spiritual cleansing tomorrow.

Well as those of you who regularly read this blog already know, I am planning a great Halloween party here in Blogland. Mr Penry has been building his bonfire for days now, it looks quite artistic. The plan is to have two – one for Halloween and then other for November 5th. These Valleys boys – pyromaniacs the lot of them!

I have been making home made wine all year and despite the weather I reckon we have a good vintage. At least, it will seem like a good vintage when you’ve all drunk enough of it. Just avoid driving for the following week to allow it to seep out of your system. You don’t want to be breathalysed after reversing through the local car showroom window on November 2nd.

My father used to make a lot of country wines (i.e. wines made with flowers, fruits, roots – anything other than grapes really) and was forever trying to find ways to increase the alcohol level. In the end he settled for the addition of vodka or polish spirit immediately prior to ramming in the cork. His must have been the only country wine that had a secondary use as a Molotov cocktail.

Apart from wine, I have been baking and the freezer is now full. Additionally there will be jacket potatoes, soup and sausages (vegetarian and pork). So you can have plenty to eat and drink, and enjoy yourselves to the full.

It is important to be prepared against gatecrashers. Anyone found in the near vicinity with flour and eggs will have them confiscated and will then be covered in batter and deep fried. I shall be zooming around on my broomstick to keep an eye on the boundaries.

I shall be back with more info later.

At this time of year, right through until early February, I light a lot of candles. It’s not that I mind the gloomy winter months (though I’m glad to see the back of them in March); it’s that candlelight gives a special quality that no amount of ambient lighting manages to replicate.

Deep down, we already know this. You fancy a romantic dinner for two? Out come the candles. Candles make us beautiful, mysterious. They have a warm sensuous glow. I don’t want my beloved to see me, spots, warts, wrinkles and all in the dazzling bright light of a 200watt megbulb. And maybe, just maybe, that’s how the earth feels too.

The wonderful golden shades of autumn get us in the mood. The trees gradually lose their leaves and even evergreens seem to grow darker, more sombre. By the time we reach Halloween/Samhain, the earth is old, its harvest mostly gathered. It needs its shadows, its candlelight. With them it becomes loving and mysterious once more.

Sometimes by being more aware of what’s really happening around us we can find ways of making the most of each change in the cycle of the seasons. So rather than dread the coming dark, cold months, I’m going to resolve to light more candles instead!

Well, it's been an interesting day. I've managed to catch up on most of the blogs, but meanwhile back at the ranch.... the count so far is one computer mouse (dead) one computer keyboard (dead) one cd player (dead)....one internet connection (dodgy)
Hmmm, makes you wonder if there's something in the air, doesn't it?

My internet connnection has been up and down like a yo-yo today and has made posting and catching up on the blogs impossible.

Please bear with me - I'll be back once it's running properly again!

Every year around this time I look for weather signs that might give me a clue about the sort of winter ahead. Sometimes I get it spectacularly wrong, admittedly, usually because I’m convinced a Polar December lies ahead when in fact it turns out quite mild. Interestingly I don’t usually get it wrong the other way around though. My family say this is because I am a natural pessimist, always predicting worse weather than we are likely to get.

This year however, I've never seen so many berries on our holly trees. 'Drenched' would be a good description. The ivy bushes are the same. And it seems the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust nature reserve at Slimbridge, in Gloucestershire are on my side too, reporting that their Bewick swans have arrived earlier than ever from Siberia this year, which apparently is a sure sign of harsh weather ahead. This is because they are trying to escape the Arctic Winds (and personally, I don’t blame them).

So – are the swans right about the weather? Do they know something we don’t? Only time will tell.

Okay, in response to popular demand here it is............taraaaa!! The Hat!

Now to be fair, I did try to photograph myself in the hat. But I just couldn't get it - and me - into the same frame. I must have a large head or something.

Anyway, this is my £3.99 wedding hat from Country Casuals (courtesy of Oxfam!) made of silk and cotton. The 'frayed' effect on the bow is deliberate and not the result of being in my possession for the past few days. Perish the thought!

Isn't it wonderful when something takes your breath away by its sheer beauty? This morning I opened the back door to let the dogs out and was confronted by this....

Magical!

Well I didn't see it coming when I posted the first blog on this subject.... a photo of the hat, eh? Hmmm... shall have to look for a suitable site. Barney offered to model it for me, but it doesn't really fit him (he is a ST Bernard, after all!)and besides, HOmer would start chewing the brim.

So, I shall give it some thought and hopefully get back soon with a photo.

Be afraid. Be very afraid......

At first sight this appears no contest, does it? Not if you're environmentally minded, anyway. Plastic bags can take ages to break down (unless of course they're filled with tins of dog food, in which case they've been known to break down in about three minutes and the tins end up on my foot. Ouch!) In fairness the Co-op have tried out bio-degradable bags, which are supposed to start rotting away within about a year or so, but these are paper thin and very flimsy.

So the answer would seem to be paper bags, wouldn't it? At least until the rain starts up here (probably this coming week) in which case the bag will start biodegrading rapidly before you get home.

Well, there's another reason I'm beginning to distrust paper bags in spite of their green credentials. Last week we bought a large mug in STarbucks, all nicely packed in a brown paper bag with handles. Then we checked the small print. 'Made in Germany'. And flown to South Wales and heaven only knows where else!

Am I going mad or something? There must be places in Wales that can make such bags for the local market - what sort of carbon footprint has been saved by importing paper bags from Germany?

Well, I've got the answer. I'm going to make my own. THere's a nice length of canvas in my garage that should do the job nicely....

I live on the side of a mountain, and from my kitchen window I can just make out the top of an ancient cairn of stones. Since early times, mountains have been venerated, held sacred. Not just in Wales or even northern Europe, but all over the world. But whereas my mountain is virtually unknown outside the immediate vicinity, some are quite famous.

Take Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Although its slopes rise very gradually, its summit is actually 56,000 ft above its base – that makes my little mountain above my kitchen window minute by comparison. But only is this a mountain by anyone’s standards it is also a volcano, and a very active one at that. In fact, some claim it is the most active volcano in the world. Thousands of visitors go to see it each year.

Now I know the saying goes, ‘Take only photographs, leave only footprints’ but people being what they are, some decide to take home a small souvenir, usually a small piece of stone from the lava slopes. There’s plenty lying about and nobody seems to notice.

Until, that is, the tourists return home. A number have reported a spate of ‘bad luck’ accidents, and become convinced that the stones they collected as harmless souvenirs are in some way cursed. Some have mailed the stones back to the Volcanoes National Park (home of Mauna Loa) and then reported no more troubles after that.

The belief seems quite widespread, too and apparently the National Park Service reports regular deliveries of packages containing stones that have been taken from the volcanoes slopes and which their new owners are only too eager to return.

I think stones can certainly ‘pick up’ on certain energies and may often be the cause or means of transmitting certain hauntings and psychic phenomena. Quite what is being transmitted at Mauna Loa I’ve no idea. One thing’s for sure, I wouldn’t go and remove stones from the cairn on my mountainside.

Today I found my perfect wedding hat, in gold cotton and silk for £3.99 in Oxfam. I am inordinately pleased with it. I checked the maker online and if I'd tried to buy it new it would have been over £100! (For a hat!!! Yikes!!!)

Anyway I tried it on for everyone to admire asking whether I was wearing it at the correct angle. Mr Penry then pointed out that by the time I'd had a couple of sherries it was likely to be on back to front anyway!