Happy Pumpkin Spice Day!

Welcome, autumnal reader, as today we recognize the time of the season and talk about all things fall, y'all!

As I've written before on this blog, Autumn is for some reason the quintessential American season, which seems to bring out the American-ness in everyone. Houses are decorated, dragons are named, and above all, pumpkin is consumed. Given the texture and the taste, you have to wonder why, but it's interesting that the eponymous pumpkin spice is similar to either mixed spice or mulled wine spices. Obviously there's something there about disguising the taste of something awful with something even more awful...

Here in the Bay Area we're at the heart of everything, dontcha know, so this week we claimed the world's biggest pumpkin:

As you can see, this appears to be very serious business, which is unsurprising given the revenue which Starbucks seem to have generated from the Pumpkin Spice Latte.

We have avoided making our mistake of last year in shopping too late for Halloween candy. There's plenty of stock of terrible sweets and stuff here, and perhaps unusually, I think I had to encourage Helen to buy more. It's a case of going big or going home with this, and frankly I intend to do both. When in Rome.

There's been a significant outbreak of skeletons for Halloween here in Palo Alto this year, including this splendid pair of specimens on a tandem outside the local French restaurant:

Let's be honest: Halloween here is blissfully silly and here to be enjoyed. But I draw the line at the Pumpkin Spice Latte...