No pumpkins

Another hectic and exhausting day in the studio, which has only just ended. I think Julian, our music producer has now had enough of the project; the constant takes, my constant voice in his ear. He doesn't have any more time this month to mix the music and I now have to book a separate recording studio for Nic to do her replacement session. The panic has also set in about the prospect of doing this work live, having heard the issues that so many high calibre singers are having with it in the studio... And then I have to organise Oranges and Lemons. Mayhem. Madness!

It's Hallowe'en and I find myself remembering childhood parties. Hallowe'en was my favourite time of year, and we were the only people in our town who had regular parties. The town I lived in was the perfect setting. The mists would roll in from the fens and the buildings were ancient. A network of secret passageways was meant to be underneath the town.

Thinking about these times makes me realise that this is the first year in my life where I've not hollowed out a pumpkin, a fact which makes me feel somehow very tearful.

October 31st 1660 and Pepys was preoccupied. He was worried about his roof terrace, and a last minute trip to the country that had been organised for the following day but mostly by the fact that he'd not had sex with his wife for two weeks. Oh well... Such is life...

11pm and a little chink of light... I just tried to explain to Nathan the significance of my not carving a pumpkin for the first time and fell into floods of hideous tears. I was obviously far more stressed than I had first thought! Nathan immediately frog-marched me to Muswell Hill and we now have two tiny pumpkins. They were all that was left in the shop. They're proper little runts; dead ugly, and going rotten, but they are going to become things of great beauty before the witching hour is upon us and Hallowe'en ends...

A show of resilience... Mine's on the right, Nathan's is the happy chap on the left!