Letters to Ann

Dear Ann,

When I was growing up Halloween was never brought into the vocabulary & certainly not celebrated in Australia. I don’t think I even learnt about it until I was quite an age, but it gradually came to the fore. I had heard it said though that Australia does normally follow what Ameica does, but it takes some time. Certainly it did & it has come to the fore gradually during the past two decades where now we are conscious of having sweets on hand for trick or treat.

A couple of years ago I got caught & only had a large Cadbury Chocolate on hand when seven little folk knocked on my door. They promised to share it but now I make sure I have a bag of treats ready.

This year I had no one knock on my door, but Charley & I were invited by the local Chamber of Commerce to take part with a stall at a Halloween Event to be held at Cardiff on the Saturday before Halloween, 28th October. The Chamber of Commerce also runs our Warners Bay Market.

Cardiff is the suburb next to mine in another direction & where David lives. This costs double what it would for a normal market, amounting to a considerable sum, which is probably why David cautioned us about attending. His contention was that people would not be interested in Christmas Puddings nor Relish at that kind of celebration.

Charley & I conferred about that side of it & with our positive attitudes decided to take the plunge & be in it. It gave us an extra market to be part of & keep our products before another section of the community. Besides the end of October is getting close enough to Christmas to be thinking about food on the Christmas table.

The morning dawned clear, sunny & warm: a very pleasant day. It was a very easy entry & we were set up in no time. Although everyone was invited to dress up for the event we didn’t take our enthusiasm that far, but the stall next to us were doing face painting & really dressed up very much for the part as witches with cob web hanging from their gazebo. They really looked good.

Even though a lot of stall holders did not do fancy costumes, perhaps next year we might be enthusiastic enough to invest in some just for fun.

Charley was very astute though. We were situated in a great spot in the middle of all the activity & opposite one of our major super markets, Woolworths. Charley slipped in there and bought back a large bag of individually wrapped sweets at a very nominal price of $4, but then a super market never lets a chance of striking while the iron is hot!

I hadn’t thought of arming myself with that kind of ammunition, but Charley was surely thinking ahead. Every child that came up to our stall would find Charley holding out the bag so they could pick.

Dawn with one of the many costumed attendees near Halloween.

Needless to say the children crowded around with their parents & created a lot of goodwill as well as the opportunity to give out a tasting of our delectable Christmas Pudding and/or Relish!

Also needless to say, but I will. Charley went through quite a number of the treat bags & became a frequent shopper at Woolworths during the day. She was also very popular with both children & parents! I was thankful for her foresight & good thinking.  She is becoming a very well established ‘stallie’ by now.

I can’t say we broke the Bank of England with our sales that day, but we we did okay & got some brand new customers in the six hours we were there. We made sure they had our business card. Once they taste our pudding – being noted & judged as the best in the world – with the price as right as it is, we are assured of future customers, so in our book it was time well spent.

The majority of the attendants were all dressed up in Halloween costumes & it made an interesting day. The streets were packed with an air of conviviality & most people wore fancy dress outfits to make it more outstanding.

Two young people really took our eye by being dressed as ‘Thing One’ & ‘Thing Two,’ which was rather original, so we made sure we got a photo of them. Actually we took quite a few photos as many of the costumes were very original. It was a fun day, we both enjoyed it & certainly we will have our name down for the event next year.

Lots of love alway, your friend, Dawn X O X O