Boo!
Some people like to dress their children in flesh-coloured clothing and questionable white footwear, then sit them on pastel walls or in front of the garage door, sipping no-fun smoothies that kids hate, surrounded by pleasantly shaped foliage and letter board signs misquoting dead writers.
Look, whatever floats your boat. I'm more inclined to tap into my kid's dark side and cause group fitness participants and joggers at Manning Park to lose concentration and drop kettle bells on each other's feet or run into trees.
There are plenty of Halloween haters in Perth and Australia. I don't get why. At this time of year social media fills with North America's saccharine "Fall"posts featuring family sets of tartan pyjamas, pumpkin pies on window sills and and lots of soothing deciduous leaf action. It's fine. It's even nice.
What's FUCKING SPECTACULAR are the Halloween posts. The costumes, the creativity, the effort, the willingness of children to be spooky and macabre and not perfect and pretty. It's a spectacle and definitely a competition, but what I love is that it's competing to have the best invention - the best story. It's not competing mindlessly to have the best life. The best Monday morning, the best school holidays, the best dubious white shoes. No one cares about that shit. Show me the COSTUMES!
Z loves Halloween.
She loves being frightened (though rarely is) and her favourite films are Burton-esque, gruesome or chilling in a kid-friendly way. She wanted to be a wolf, but despite my clearly exceptional talent at making my kid look like you'd hit her over the head with a shovel if she appeared in front of you, that was too bloody hard. So we settled on Corpse Bride. She did criticise my make-up skills with the same severely judgmental face you see below.
"I look like a panda. I don't look dead enough."
Never change, kid.
If you want to see my less hammy editing and more sunshine I'm on Instagram @tayareidphotographer
Happy Halloween.
T. x.