Danskcolin: Sunday October 11th 2026 "Halloween only weeks away!!! Is YOUR costume 'sorted'? Bet it isn't haha!!!!"

Yes, Friends, you may not have noticed, but Halloween is a mere 20 days away, and most people have decided on their 2026 costume, so better 'get a wriggle on' !!!!

You can get plenty of ideas from the papers - check out their Halloween supplements! Do it now haha!!!

Here's a sample from today' Onion News, if you're still 'stumped' !!!!

It's all just madness, really, isn't it!

However, the stories bring a malicious grin to the normally impassive faces of me and my wife Lois this morning, here in semi-lovely Liphook, Hampshire - no question about that!!!!

me and my wife Lois - a recent picture

And we're laughing because the prospect of this year's Halloween is bringing a touch of glamour to an otherwise stay-at-home Sunday for us - you can't tell it from the above photo, but yesterday we got our his-and-hers anti-flu and anti-COVID jabs from our local surgery. And today - sure enough, and totally predictably (!) - our upper arms are aching "something ghastly", so fair enough not going out, that's what we say !!!!

Luckily, to cheer us, we've got our weekly catch-up video call with our "Australian family" - our daughter Sarah, who lives in the northern suburbs of Perth, Australia, with husband Francis and their 13-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, which is nice!

Halloween, we learn, is just as big in Australia as it is in the UK, and our rascally twin granddaughters are already working on designing and making their own costumes, would you believe - the little scamps!!!

This year they're going to be dressed as jellyfish, under transparent umbrellas which sport flashing disco lights inside, and colourful ribbons outside to represent their little jellyfish legs, so incredibly unusual - something we've come to expect from the twins.

Expect the unexpected, when it comes to our granddaughters - that's what Lois and I always say !!!! The weirdest thing, however, is imagining Halloween in the blazing hot Perth sunshine, because it's coming into summer down there, would you believe, which is totally mad!

What a crazy planet we live on !!!!

flashback to 2021: our granddaughters in Australia, Lily and Jessica,

then 8 years old, prepare to celebrate Halloween in the blazing hot Perth sunshine

- seems all wrong, doesn't it! What a crazy planet we live on !!!!

The twins plan to do their trick-or-treating this year not in their own neighbourhood - the houses are too far apart they say, which is a bore! Instead they're travelling with mum and dad on the 5-minute car-drive to nearby Eglinton, where "the houses are closer together", they tell us, which will maximise their candy-per-yard "haul", which makes sense to us !!!

Lois and I find the twins today bubbling over with excitement about making up their jellyfish costumes, although there's also an undercurrent of "oh dear, school holidays are over!" feeling, because, although it may be Lunchtime in Liphook (cue for a song title?), it's 8:30 pm in Perth, and their next school term starts tomorrow, Monday, after a 2 week break.

However, we manage to cheer the little scamps up, by reminding them that it's far worse for the teachers, whose hearts will be, almost but not quite literally, "in their boots" tonight - no question about that! And this cheery reminder seems to do the trick for the twins, and the video call ends on a happier, and a palpably more triumphant note, which is nice!

Kids rule OK haha !!!!!

19:00 And this evening, Lois and I, feeling a bit more refreshed, revive our memories of Hungary, a country we visited several times in the 1990's and in the "noughties", when I was learning the language., by listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme, "Grandchildren of the '56 Revolution".

This month it's the 70th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, when the people of Hungary incredibly tried to set up a democracy, and for a few glorious weeks, even defied the Russian tanks that Nikita Krushchev sent to crush them.

(left) tonight's BBC radio programme "Grandchildren of the '56 Revolution",

and (right) flashback to 1998, Lois (3rd left) and me (rightmost)

arm in arm with some of our Hungarian friends - happy days!!!!

It's nostalgic for Lois and me to hear this programme - we were both 10 years old when the revolution took place, and we both remember clearly what a sensation it created in the West at the time. We also remember the influx of Hungarians fleeing their country and moving to the UK in the years that followed.

This BBC Radio 4 commemoration tonight proves to be a somewhat chaotic programme, nonetheless, with lots of confusing, intercut recordings of witness statements, crowds chanting, bullets flying etc, but Lois and I find it fascinating to be reminded of the uniqueness of this event, an event which still casts a long shadow on Hungarians today.

Russian tanks on the streets of Budapest - the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

In 1956, this cataclysmic event split families, of course - we hear tonight from witnesses who had both resistance members and government officials in their families, and we hear about the strange conflicting results that that brought about. We also hear about how, in the capital Budapest, many of the key sites of the Revolution, like the former city radio station, look neglected today, with tarnished commemorative plaques etc falling into decay.

The most astonishing thing is that, for 30 years after the crushing of the Revolution, under the Moscow-backed Janos Kadar regime, Hungarians were forbidden by law even to mention the event in public - an astonishing silence. Imagine anything like that in the UK - for example, being forbidden to even mention World War II until 1975 - it's hard to imagine, isn't it!

Janos Kadar (right), who prevented Hungarians from

even mentioning the failed revolution of 1956, seen here

in Moscow meeting Russian leaders

And there are some other puzzling conundrums. The man who was the country's long-term Prime Minister from 2010 until August this year, actually cozied up to the Russians, incredibly. Intent on skewing the constitution in his party's favour, and eager to increase his personal wealth and that of his family and "cronies", Orban also needed an "adversary", many say, to make himself look like a hero. And for his adversaries, strangely, he picked the democratic West and the European Union.

heroes and villains: astonishingly to Hungarian leader Viktor Orban

Putin was his hero, and the EU's Ursula von der Leyen was his villain

Fortunately Orban was unseated in this year's Hungarian General Election, and, in tonight's programme we hear how, incredibly again, Hungary overnight became a totally different country, suddenly becoming relaxed and friendly again, like it used to be.

Nice to get a real "feel-good" story for once, isn't it !!!

flashback to August: (left) the Hungarian elections which unseat former Prime Minister

Viktor Orban, in favour of (right) opposition leader Peter Magyar

What a story though!

And, in its conclusion, a nice one for Lois and me to go to bed on, so that's all good!!!!

Finally, here are some of mine and Lois's memories of Hungary, Lois with a broken nude (!), at a sculpture park near Budapest, and me with my friend "Magyar" Mike, sporting our "excellent worker!" medals from the Communist era, which we bought second-hand at a Hungarian car-boot sale - happy days!!!!