The crochet toppers are gone from the railings on St Helen Wharf, but there was some snow this morning. It was already crisp by the time I trod on it, and so probably fell earlier in the night. It lay thinly along the pavement rather than on the road.

Birds flew over, hopeful of food, at the Wilsham Road feeding area. The brightest patch of sky was south of east. The sun always rises somewhere in the east, but the point shifts through the year, from well south of east in winter to well north of east in summer.

Blacklands Way, in Abingdon Business Park – normally a private road of offices and warehouses – has become an unexpected hotspot of Halloween activity.

Despite the KEEP OUT sign at the entrance, I ventured in.

The grass verges have turned into a dance space for some plastic skeletons.

By the duck ponds, somebody has crash-landed into the hedge.

Chalked blackboard gravestones have puns like “Dee Composing” and “NOAH SCAPE”.

It’s all intended in good humour, though last year when a similar – if smaller – display appeared, someone complained about it on FixMyStreet. Not everybody likes Halloween.

Now that the clocks have gone back and night creeps in so much earlier, Abingdon’s shopfronts have been transformed by spiders, skeletons, and seasonal spooks.

Can you match the Spiders and Spooks with the Shops?

Where will you spot a willowy web-dweller the size of a dinner plate?

Where will you look up from My Darling and see a pipe-cleaner spider’s lair?

Where will you find this fabulous fright among the autumn leaves?

Where are A Cacia customers warned to “Enter at your own risk”?

And where will you find a crafty gallery of Halloween classics?


This cat chased a squirrel past the tree towards the Brew House apartments on Coopers Lane. Finding no escape that way, the squirrel ran back. The cat managed to get a paw on it’s back, but not enough to hold it, and the squirrel ran up the tree.

The leaves were thick enough to hide it from my view and I could not see any way of escape. The cat waited. A leaf fell. The cat waited. Another leaf fell.