Massive bonfire and more filth, and a crow

Remember, remember, the 5th of November...'cause if you don't you'll miss the HUGE bonfire at Woodhouse Moor! WM is the park right by my house. Every year for Guy Fawkes day they have a massive fire, and set off fireworks. Of course I attended. The Pie went as well. She loves a good crowd! She was very, very happy to see the hundreds of humans gathered around.

Here you can see the fire:

By this point it had collapsed on itself a bit, so its not as big as it started out. They make it out of a large number of pallets. This year they had some real problems getting it lit, but it finally got going when they HOSED IT DOWN WITH LIGHT FLUID FROM A BACKPACK SPRAYER!

I had not intended to stay for the fireworks, but it took so long for the fire to get going that I ended up doing so. Now, apparently many dogs have firework phobia, and spend the evening hiding under beds. Tasha, it seems, has firework-philia. She didn't flinch for any of the bangs, bright flashes of light, etc. In fact she seemed happier than before, and was cruising around with her tail up, wagging happily, and generally seemed to be saying "oh jolly good, I see there are a great multitude of humans enjoying my park, how lovely, truly splendid, yes. Do come again." I didn't let her off the leash though, it was just way to busy swarming with people that she longed to go molest.

After all that several of us went back to my friend's house for a movie and ice cream.


Another newsworthy item is the "bin strike" in Leeds. The bin collectors and street cleaners have been on strike...for something like two months now. In that time there have been occasional trash pick-ups, as the council hires in freelance binmen (or something like that, lol) to harvest the stenching fruits of humanity. Its just not enough, though, and we end up with scenes like this surrounding all the public bins:

I have to admit, though, since I live in a student-y area, its usually pretty darn trashy anway. The students here are disgraceful, truly. Behold, the view behind the two student houses next door to me:

Not very attractive eh?

Now, back to the park. The fire and the masses of people who come to see it, AND the heavy machinery they use to pile up the pallets, all leave a bit of a mess in one area of the park. You can see here the fire circle, and the mud surrounding it, and in the distance the Pie, waiting for me at the edge of the mud. Also there are some crows there...

Here's a close up view of the fire-area. You can see it is CHOCK FULL of nails! From the pallets, of course. And no, I don't think they will clean it up, as it was never cleaned up last year. So, I have to keep the Pie out of there until they recede into the mud.

As promised, here's a crow.

They get quite close to me now. There is a set of three, and a pair of two, that I feed almost every day. This lucky crow has just scored half a dog treat.

Halloween!

For Halloween this year I did all the usual things, well, the same things I did last year anyway, ha! First I carved a pumpkin and roasted the seeds - DELICIOUS. As you can see I carved a crayfish:

I made a costume for myself, I was a traffic cop. The outfit is based off the Japanese traffic cop ladies, I didn't want to look TOO much like a legitimate UK cop. Plus this outfit includes a nifty shoulder cord, vesty vest, and a tie. The hat is the UK hat. I also had handcuffs ;) But in the photo they are on my back where you cannot see them. I enjoyed wearing the outfit so much, I wore it to work on monday, tee hee. Well, most of it anyway!

My labmate's costume was a Wispa candy bar ("chocolate bar" as they say here). We made the costume together using a bedsheet and some leftover foam from the crayfish costumes. Also bits of felt and paper. It was a seriously good costume. Seeing a dancing Wispa bar improved my life significantly, hahahah! And yes she wore brown clothes so she could 'be' the chocolate! And she has brown hair, it was perfect.

For Halloween fun, 13 of us met up at my friend's house and we hung out there for awhile, gorging ourselves on snacks. Then we headed to the Fab Cafe, a bar/club themed on bad horror films, cult TV, and sci-fi. Its THE place to do halloween in Leeds, to be sure. They had a costume contest, fire poi outside on the patio, played fun halloween songs, etc. They also randomly gave us all sandwiches. Needless to say, I ate them. Oh, and at the bar they sell candy as well as alcohol. SOMEONE may have had too many candy necklaces on halloween! But I won't say who, ha!

Here's a photo of the inside of Fab - unfortunately there aren't any great costumes in this picture I do not think... but there were many excellent ones.

Oh yeah, and my guinea pig Conference pear dressed up as her namesake. I can see the ressemblance, can't you?