I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers

The title quote from L.M. Montgomery uttered by the flame haired Anne Shirley pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about this time of year.  Autumn is the season I start to grow back into my own skin.  I am calmed and comforted by its presence.  Autumn is my time.

This year October has seen every single weekend completely booked up with weddings, family events and other social arrangements which all seem to have lined themselves up one after the other.  This combined with dealing with 2 children with a combination of chicken pox, the usual coughs and colds, and the worst teething pain I've ever known a baby to suffer, means that I have not had time to even check my reflection of late let alone operate in blogland.  I am finding solace in the thought of my forthcoming holiday where I will be hopefully be able to spend a few days drinking in visual beauty similar to that depicted in these photographs.

All photos found on this blog 

I hope you are enjoying the change of season wherever you may be.

xxx

Different colours made of tears

I recently spent some time in the sprawling New Galloway countryside.

Just down the road from our deserted rustic cottage was a 17th century church 

Spooky dancing children on these crumbling tombstones

The weather was wet and overcast for most of the week

It was the perfect place to contemplate the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the major life changes ahead

I love tombstones that look like sacrificial tables

5 months in I am weary, tearful and distinctly lacking in glow.  Impending motherhood this time around has manifested itself as an all out attack on my equilibrium.

But this part of Scotland at this time of year presented a welcome break and an ideal environment for gathering one's thoughts and spending treasured time with loved ones.  Photographs couldn't do justice to the miles and miles of unkempt and unspoilt countryside and vast rugged landscapes.  Pretty it certainly isn't, but it is so wild and beautiful

Octoberfest

It's October.  My favourite month of the year.  Autumn is here and my thoughts have turned to dark nights and graveyards, abandoned old buildings and foggy landscapes, Victoriana and pre-Raphaelites, skulls and faeries

All images found here

House In Nightmare Park

OK, it's October.  The very best month of the year, officially!  Very soon, in this part of the world, we will start to have very short, chilly days but very long and cosy evenings.  Perfect for a spot of camp gothic horror!

At about the age of 15, I stumbled, quite by chance, across House In Nightmare Park (thank you graveyard slot, Channel 4).  I saw Frankie Howerd ("get your titters out") and a creepy gothic mansion and I was hooked

There are sweeping staircases and dusty candleabras everywhere.  The sets and camera work create a creeping sense of claustrophobia - but with Frankie Howerd about, of course you just have to watch with your tongue ever so slightly in your cheek.

 

The story commences with deluded ham actor Foster Twelvetrees (Howerd) delivering a reading of The Old Curiosity Shop to a spectacularly disinterested Victorian audience (look out for the encore scene, it's priceless).

He is invited to a large country mansion by it's owner Stewart Hendison (Ray Milland) with a view to perfoming one of his "inimitible renditions" for the household.  

Stewart lives with his ever silent and never smiling sister Jessica, played by the brilliant Rosalie Crutchley;   both of whom are converts to the Hindu faith and ardent Kali worshippers.

We are in time introduced to various other 'eccentric' family members and it soon becomes clear that all is not as it seems

 

What follows is a beautiful mix of piercing screams, dark corridors, encircling mist and a growing corpse count.  Throw in the classic mad relative locked away in the attic and, well, you get the picture.

  

You're my wife now Daaave

So if you like creepy Victorian mansions, creaking staircases and semi-aristocratic head-cases, this should be right up your street

Baffingly panned by the critics on release, it has since quite rightly become something of a cult classic.  Unfortunately it has never been released on DVD so its a pain to get hold of.  My brother in law recently did me a VHS transfer which I have been watching with renewed enthusiasm.  Unfortunately the quality is not great.

The house used for location is the beautiful Oakley Court in Windsor.

This glorious building is now a luxury hotel.  Check out this blog post which gives a history of the house and the different films in which it has featured.  You'll no doubt recognise some of them.

Go on, give this film a watch if you dare

Mwah ha ha ha