ANXIETY, HALLOWEEN MAGIC AND WHAT NEXT FOR THE BLOG...

Hello, hope you all had a good Halloween. After a bit of a shaky start to Halloween week, my Halloween turned out to be a good one thanks in no small part to a little coincidental Halloween magic that just happened to flow my way when I needed it the most.

So what am I blithering on about you may ask ? Allow me to explain...

Basically my mental health isn't always that great, thanks to the fact that I suffer from anxiety. The form of anxiety I have is an inherited condition that runs in my Dad's side of the family (me, my Dad, my Auntie, several of my cousins and my Grandad all have been inflicted with the "family curse" to some degree or other). Basically our bodies have a bit of a serotonin imbalance and sometimes they don't produce enough to make us feel fully composmentis. When this happens an anxiety attack is usually not far behind. These attacks can range from mild to extreme and they're always, ALWAYS an utter pain in the arse.

A lot of the time I can cope and manage to fight these feelings off or at least ride out the worst of them, but sometimes they hit so hard that they knock me for six and can leave me reeling for several days afterwards. On Tuesday night I had one of my bad attacks.

I rode out the worst of it and woke up on Wednesday morning feeling mentally shot away and very anxious (a feeling of all encompassing impending doom is the best way to describe it), the attack lasted most of the rest of that day and I went to bed expecting to have an utterly miserable October the 31st this year.

Anyway, I woke up Halloween morning and felt ok...ish, slightly rattled and feeling like I could be easily triggered but determined to at least try and enjoy Halloween (I don't start work till late afternoon and only work till about 8 o'clock thankfully, so I had plenty of time to try to salvage my day).

I decided to go for a walk and have a cup of tea and a bit of a read at the local McDonald's just down the road.

I live in a small village on the outskirts of Norwich in Norfolk, so to get to the McDonald's I have to walk down a country lane. The lane is pleasant and tree lined and the walk is about a mile long, so I got to soak in some lovely looking Autumn colours. This was a good start.

After about twenty minutes I arrived at the McDonald's which is situated on a retail park just at the point where the countryside starts to morph into the satellite suburbs of Norwich.

A quick note here - I'm not a huge fan of McDonald's, I used to work for them when I was sixteen years old and they were bastards then and I'm pretty sure they're probably still bastards now, but living where I do (plus being unable to drive) there's really no other options around if you want to go out for a cheap(ish) cuppa. The nice thing about this local Maccy D's is that it's still close enough to the countryside to have one side of the building be surrounded by trees, so at least at this time of year you still get some of that all important Autumn colour and ambience.

Armed with my large cup of PG Tips, I sat down at a table on the tree shaded side of the building. I noticed that they where playing Halloween themed songs over the tannoy (Monster Mash, Bat Out Of Hell and what sounded like something from the 1950's called The Zombie Stomp), this was a nice touch and helped sustain my mood and even made me not regret giving my £1.35 to an evil corporation.

I slowly sipped my tea and read my book...

It was the Marvel Essential Monster Of Frankenstein - a nice big fat chunky collection of all the 70's Marvel comics Frankenstein stories (these are REALLY good by the way). Perfect Halloween reading...

I was there for roughly an hour. I finished my tea, bought a bit of food from a nearby supermarket and started my walk back home. 

Already I was feeling a lot better than I had for the past couple of days, but the final magical piece was about to slide into place.

As I walked home I had to pass a place called the Royal Norfolk Showground which is basically a huge field where various events are held throughout the year - in the Summer it's music festivals, at Christmas there's a tacky "Santa Claus Land", recently there was a Russian Circus there. At the moment there appears to be a funfair and also some kind of big top which has been blasting out music whenever I've walked past.

Today it was blasting out the theme tune from the film The Monster Club, the song is called Monsters Rule OK.

I absolutely LOVE the Monster Club (it's cheesy as hell but a lot of fun. There's a review of it on here somewhere but don't ask me to post a link to it because I don't know how, Over a year and a half in the blogging game and I STILL don't know how to do this basic task, heathen that I am). I also love the song too (which is also cheesy as hell). The weird thing is I don't think I've ever heard the song played anywhere outside the actual film itself and here it was blasting into my ears at full volume on Halloween morning.

This was the final piece of the puzzle, this little weird coincidence, it was like someone, somewhere just knew exactly the RIGHT thing that would put a big smile on my face and finish off perfectly the lovely, healing morning I'd just had. Halloween week started out being a bummer and now I was back in the zone again. That's the magic of Halloween and this particular little piece of magic felt like it was just for me at the point that I needed it the most.

I then went home and carved a Pumpkin, originally he was going to have a sad face but I was in such a good mood I gave him a happy one instead.

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Before I go just a quick note about what to expect on here once Halloween is done and dusted.

For the first couple of weeks of November I'll be sticking with the horror theme (I always start November in Halloween mode and finish it in Christmas mode), in the interim I'll probably open it out a bit and review a bit of Sci-Fi and exploitation stuff for a while, then when we hit December it'll be full on Christmas themed content with the usual Tales From The Back Room twist. So expect Christmas ghost stories, festive frights and winter themed horror galore. No matter what time of year it is the horror stuff never leaves for long and I wouldn't have it any other way.

See you next time.