Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun

Well, it's Halloween tomorrow night! Samhain, All Hallows Eve......call it what you want but, as far as I'm concerned, it's predominantly another way of large stores selling shoddy merchandise to line their pockets and for mini-terrorists to extort goodies by Trick or Treating.

I've never had any experience of Trick or Treaters and am rather intrigued by what constitutes a "Trick"? The only one I've heard of is setting a paper bag full of dog poo alight and then ringing the door bell. Grown-up opens door, espies conflagration and does the obvious thing; stamps on it to put it out! I have to say, this appeals to my baser sense of humour as long as I'm not the aforesaid grown-up.

Halloween has become a bit of a horror fest for me already. Not from the ghosts and ghoulies aspect, but from an entertainment point of view. You see, following a fairly (OK, amazingly) successful last DJ session at my Local, I was asked to host a Halloween Party night. This would basically involve a Quiz, silly games and lots of dancing and general revelry. I use DJ software, my laptop and a gynormous amp and speakers for the whole set-up and, after the last gig, was really looking forward to it. I prepared a playlist of as many horror-related songs as I could find, loaded them into Cortez (my laptop) and was feeling quietly confident that all was in readiness for a great evening. Incidentally, I discovered a plethora of Halloween songs including "Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun" and "Drac the Knife"!

The fun started last night when Cortez died. Totally. Utterly. Dead as the proverbial dodo. Me being the cool,calm, collected person that I am took this in my stride. The fact that Mrs B, watching me lying on the floor kicking and screaming, enquired if epilepsy was a pre-requisite of modern DJ-ing brought me to my senses.

Right, contingency plans: early visit to the laptop doctor today but mirror everything I'd done on my new sooper-dooper PC, just in case, seemed to be the order of the day so that I could always take that if necessary. I "acquired" another copy of the programme via the internet and loaded it into the PC only to find that it had a penchant for crashing in mid-tune.

OK, fingers crossed re. today's visit then. I travelled to my tame repair man bright and early and he did a very good imitation of someone who knows fuck-all about laptops. "Hmm" he said, "it could be the charger. There again, it might be the battery." I politely enquired if he wanted the full set and wished to add the actual laptop to his diagnoses? "Oh, definitely, yes. That may well be the cause and that'll cost you", he replied cheerfully.

Muttering about that was the last time I would support the small businessman, I drove home and made a last-resort decision......... a decision made only by an insane or desperate man.

So, when we arrived at PC World, the nice man was very helpful and suggested we take it to a laptop repairer down the road. He even gave us their card! Bearing in mind he was standing under a huge price list which included the cost of repairing laptops, I found this a bit strange but took his advice and toddled off there accordingly. I really had little choice apart from seriously considering buying a new laptop but, given the problems with the software, I felt that this wasn't a logical move.

The recommended laptop shop people were awfully nice. I explained my predicament and told them I needed it working by tomorrow (Wednesday) night. He looked me straight in the eye and faithfully promised he would ring me Thursday morning with a diagnosis! Bowing to the inevitable, I accepted it was the PC or nothing and retired gracefully.

Then it was off into Brighton for the fancy dress stuff. I had already decided I would wear my QuizMeister gold sequinned shirt along with vampire makeup so the purchases should be simple. Imagine if you will, a normal-sized shop filled with the population of Lithuania, all fighting over witches hats, stick-on warts, fangs etc whilst the air was filled with shrieks of "Nah, I wanna be the buxom victim, you can be an old crone". We eventually purchased white, red and grey face paint, spray-on black hair dye, sponges, hair gel, blood and all the other accoutrements that would transform me from Superhero-about-town Bertie to QuizMeister G, scourge of virgins and sucker of necks and headed back to the relative tranquility of home.

Tonight, touch wood, the software is behaving, the make-up has been tried and I am reasonably calm once more. Hopefully, this time tomorrow night, I will be in a mildly alcoholic haze, celebrating a successful evening with a throng of happy revellers staggering home to put the willies up each other, so to speak.

No doubt, a full report of the Party will be forthcoming so watch this space!