Back from the dead: the immortal power of fiction and fancy dress! Clinging on for dear life like crazy and remembering the poor old whales
THE Count is back! In truth he never went away. The enduring power of Bram Stoker’s Dracula has rubbed off on generation after generation of readers and film lovers. So it was with a sense of the circularity and paternal pride that I applied the white and red make-up and tried to stuff the fangs into the Little Fella’s mouth for his school fancy dress day on Friday.
The excitement levels were through the roof as he saw his reflection in the mirror, (he hadn’t copped this wasn’t supposed to happen). The Whirlwind Wonder was her ever-creative self, wanting a bloody maid costume.
Having searched several supermarkets and toy stores, feeling increasingly like a failed father at every turn, she eventually settled on a scary prom queen number.
Sick throughout his childhood, Stoker went on to write what is widely regarded as the most successful horror story of all time. I read Dracula for the first time in my teens and was swept along by the fiendish drama. The battle between good and evil is an age old trope, but Stoker managed to infuse his novel with colour, tragedy and a real humanity. Despite the melodramatic language, the gothic fantasy provided a transporting, exhilarating read, which has – over the decades since its release in 1897 – inspired countless film directors and authors.
I sunk my teeth into Dracul last week and have been hooked ever since. A prequel written by Stoker’s great grand-nephew, it’s clear that writing is in the blood.
Despite my best efforts it normally takes me months to finish a book but I’m flying through this. It is an atmospheric gem, dripping with darkness and replete with creatures that go bump in the night. There was a time when I set myself the goal of reading all of the classics of literature but life got in the way. But there are few more enjoyable things in this life than a good book.
Growing up Halloween was always a special time of the year. Presaged by the arrival of darker evenings, chimney smoke and warmer clothes, it brought some colour into our lives long before the days of handheld devices. A black plastic bag with a hole just big enough for my head to squeeze through, a pair of plastic fangs that starved the lungs of air and some Sudocream was the sum total of the Halloween costume I rocked. Having an American mother meant Halloween was a bigger deal in our house than in some of our neighbours, but the old traditional games, like bobbing for apples and cutting the flour, not to forget finding the ring in the barn brac, were always great fun.
These traditions continue to this day and I unashamedly embrace them. I’ve made a graveyard cake complete with bulging eyeballs, chocolate soil and marshmallow headstones. Home has been transformed into a haunted house with fake cobwebs obviating the need to clean the real ones!
The children have been planning their costumes for weeks. The children even have their zombie and hissing vampire faces perfected having been cautioned that they need to perform on the doorsteps if they are to be rewarded with treats. Instead of plastic bags theirs cost up to €20. What scared me most shopping for them was the Christmas chocolate boxes and decorations on display, as Time chimed home with alarming alacrity.
The arrival of the darker nights has gotten me motivated to embrace reading and writing and I even managed my first letter. The old traditions are best. VERY time I go to do it, just before I do it, I pause for a moment. Perhaps I even pause for two moments, sometimes.’ Hermione was in confessional mode.
‘Yeah, I am the same,’ I responded gravely, nodding with sympathy, empathy and understanding. ‘I pause too. I genuinely pause.’
‘I know there are consequences,’ my fragrant spouse continued. ‘I really do realise that what I do can make a difference, so I pause.’
‘Me as well. I must pause for at least, oh at least three seconds,’ my voice was sad, sad in a reflective way, ‘every time I go to do it.’
Then we confessed together, two voices singing in unison from the same wretched hymn sheet: ‘Then we go ahead and do it anyway.’
The time has surely come to cease going ahead, to stop doing it anyway. It used to be when penguins were the creatures summoned up to remind residents of Medders Manor of their obligations to the planet. The logic was that, every time a light bulb was left burning unnecessarily, then a little chunk of Antarctic ice melted and the unfortunate birds were moved one step closer to extinction.
‘Remember the penguins!’ was our watchword as we raised the family.
‘Remember the penguins!’ before running a hot bath when a cold shower would do the job just as well.
‘Remember the penguins!’ before switching on a second bar of the electric heater during cold nights around the television.
‘Remember the penguins!’ before going to bed without first checking all lights and appliances.
Remembering the penguins has not only served to alert young minds to matters ecological but also to keep the ESB bill within bounds. Now the time has come to remember the whales too.
These great ocean creatures spend their lives patrolling the deep sea, hoovering up plankton as they go. But these days the plankton they eat comes with a queasy ration of plastic, all because I go ahead and use cling-film to wrap the sandwiches for my packed lunch. If poor old Jonah of biblical fame were swallowed by a whale in 2018, he might usefully spend his time in the beast’s stomach gathering up all the rubbish generated by throwaway humanity.
Of course I could put my ham-with-mustard in a proper lunch box or fold a sheet of paper around my cheese-and-tomato, but instead I take the lazy route and reach for the roll. Cling-film represents all that is ingenious in modern life – but it also stands for so much that is wrong and self-indulgent. Cling-film is both endlessly useful and infinitely unnecessary.
Since we discovered that it is possible to deploy cling-film in the microwave, our consumption of the stuff at the Manor has gone through the roof. We are totally cling-film dependent, reaching for that roll of clear, stretchable, self-adhering plastic given the slightest excuse.
We love the way it seals food into containers. We love the way it is perfectly see-through. We love its handiness and adaptability. We are hopeless cling-film junkies – and we are not alone in our addiction. Supermarkets are similarly in thrall, using cling-film on a vast scale to package and present all manner of products. The environmentalists have taken to calling cling-film, drink bottles, yoghurt pots, coffee-to-go beakers and such likes ‘single use’ plastic, too much of which finds a way into the rivers and seas.
Weaning ourselves off single use plastics will be painful but, please, remember those whales. We will all soon be back to the days of the thrupenny deposit on the bottle of pop, though some of us may have to be dragged kicking and screaming…
Hermione paused over the left over portion of shepherd’s pie she was preparing to put in the fridge. Yours truly paused over the cold beef with chutney sandwich I had made to sustain me through the long day’s work ahead.
Then we reached for the roll. We have masses of cling-film in store. It would be a shame to waste it.
The whales will be remembered some other day.