Hallowqueen (and other strange British traditions)

If this blog post seems a bit disjointed, that's only because this past week in Oxford was a study in all things random and a bit bizarre. This could be partially due to Halloween, but also things general to this place itself. 

Things started off normally enough: a mad rush to get finished with all of the work I'd neglected whilst (one of my new favorite British words) traipsing around Belgium with my father, eating at a few new restaurants in town and also going to some other colleges to sample their fare and complain about the general homogeneity of blandness that is British cuisine, etc.

Before the end of the week, however, I'd have been relatively convinced I was in the opening sequence to a horror film, almost been capsized in a boat, and gone to a party where every single person was dressed in drag.

So, let's rewind, shall we? First off, the horror movie bit. You see, a friend of mine here, Aidan, is a huge horror movie buff, and decided to embark on a crusade to watch a different scary movie every night of the week leading up to Halloween. Being somewhat of a fan myself (with the notable exception of unnecessary gory films, which I think are honestly more a testament to the costume and fake blood people than the directors or actors), I convinced Joe and Kiley to head to his room on Monday night for a late showing of "The Strangers". It's a movie about a couple that's staying at a vacation home in the woods and *spoiler alert* end up being the victims of a random act of psychopathy, and it was a good one! Per usual, I got some good gasps out of the movie, but wasn't particularly perturbed in the aftermath, although Joe and I had to ride our bikes home on either side of Kiley's so she would be able to make it back without having a heart attack.

The next night though, I had rowing at 7 pm. Now, that wouldn't be late in the summer, but considering it is pitch black by 5 pm here after daylight savings, I could barely even see the path in front of me in the pool of my bicycle light on my bumpy ride down to the boathouse. I'd thought I was running late, so imagine my surprise when I pulled up to the Brasenose facility and all of the lights were off and the doors closed. Considering I work out with the novice rowers, who are mostly irresponsible and chronically late 18 year olds, this wouldn't have been surprising, except for our coach has always been early. To set the mood more effectively, I should've probably told you that the boathouses are in a row along the Thames, in the middle of a large common greenspace that lends them an eerie quiet except for the water lapping and the occasional noise made by the overpopulated geese and ducks. I should've also said that there is no cell reception, so I had no way of contacting anyone on my team, and the moon hadn't managed to fight off the clouds yet, so I stood there in the dark, overanalyzing every sound and flashing back to the movie that hadn't seemed scary the night before. When I finally heard something repetitive, it was footsteps running towards me, and I'd already gripped my bicycle lock like brass knuckles when I heard a girl's voice asking if she was late or if we were in the right place. It was Louise, one of my teammates, and shortly behind her came our coach (and about 10 minutes behind him, the rest of the girls, who mumbled some excuse about not being able to find the place in the dark). So it ended up being fine, but for about two and a half minutes, I was fairly sure that there were scary country folk lurking around and waiting to stab me! Guess that's the mystique of the last week of October.

The next night was a more traditional celebration of the witching hour: the annual Brasenose Halloween bop.  Now, my college hadn't done a very good job of advertising the occasion, since the only notice we got was this somewhat bizarre email from our social secretary the day before the holiday:

Your HCR social sec' team, freshly aggrandised, just wanted to remind you about the Halloween bop this Thursday down the bar!! - Woo I'm really having fun with fonts for your guys.- Join us from 8 pm 'til 10:30 for a condensed but intense evening of music (YES, you did read "music": our usually non bop-friendly college is allowing to some music for like ONCE in a century so do come down and check this out!), cheap drinks (subsidised by the HCR) and fancy costumes. The best ones will be selected and given free drinks so dress up, peeps! Oh by the way, I won't personally because well you know I'm French so I've basically been brought up to reject American imperialism every day of the year and especially that one. But please, be my guests, you guys go ahead, show me who the boss is, impress me with your looks and thereby tell me why the globalisation of this world culture of degeneration and plagiarism is a good thing! I'm open to being convinced. Ok, maybe I'll wear a brooch or something.
Oh and did I mention the music? I did. *thumb up*
And I've tried all the font colours so there's nothing left for me to say but: come down the bar for the bop on Thursday!!! We need you!

...but I still managed to round up a few friends from inside and outside Brasenose to go to the party until the rather PG-13 hour of 10:30, after which we decided we'd head to some pubs. I should preface this by describing the deep, undying love that British people seem to have for "fancy dress", or costume parties. As my friend Sophie, who's from London, so succinctly put it, "British people just can't seem to be themselves unless they're dressed up as something else."

I'd juggled around ideas of several costumes, ranging from a tree to Sarah Palin, but finally decided to go as the Statue of Liberty. On the suggestion of one of my friends, I decided to carry a "Closed" sign instead of a plain book, and I was therefore technically "government shutdown Statue of Liberty". In light of the fact that almost every single European I have met seems to delight in harping on the circus that is contemporary American politics, it was somewhat of a joke and somewhat of a defense mechanism. To indulge my insatiable love for puns, I bought a flashlight to carry as my "torch" (it's only funny if you know that in British English, a flashlight is called a torch, and even then, it's not particularly funny). At the actual party, I managed to have a picture taken with a pirate, Batgirl, and a scarecrow; or, Daniel, Cate, and (another) Rachel.

I ended up winning third prize (and a bottle of wine) in the costume contest, so it worked out rather nicely. Although I think that the win was probably better deserved by my flatmates, who came as "American imperialists" in jeans, football jerseys, baseball caps, and Nike shoes and yelled repeatedly at everyone not in costume! 

 The next day was Friday, and it was a fairly typical day of homework and class. The only blip on the radar was when Joe and I tried to go to formal hall at my college (remember, this is a Harry Potter style dinner complete with robes and candlelight), but arrived literally two minutes late and were barred from entering the dining room! I had no idea that the Brits were so strict about being prompt, but we settled for trying out another good Indian place instead of having three swanky courses.

Saturday, however, was one of the biggest "bops" of the year. St. Antony's, which is an all-graduate college and known for being a little crazy and a lot fun, has a yearly "Hallowqueen" party, to which everyone must cross-dress in order to be admitted. It's always one of the most popular events for grad students, and people in my class had been chattering about the costumes they'd wear all week. To give you an idea of the extreme nature of this bop, five of the guys in my class dressed up as The Spice Girls, with the requisite wigs, dresses, and even fake breasts and makeup to make it seem more realistic.

Now, I'm always down for a good group costume, and since Joe was such a good sport about wearing the pig pajamas to Balliol's bop, I had several ideas stewing for us. I'd originally hoped to do a Black Swan-White Swan- creepy dance instructor ensemble from the Natalie Portman movie with me, Joe, and our friend Chris (who is a Marine, which would add to the hilarity of a tutu), but finding cheap ballet clothes that came in large man sizes in Oxford proved difficult, so I went back to the drawing board. Then, when Kiley told me that she didn't have any plans, I had a wonderful idea: Dukes of Hazzard! It was simple, since among the three of us we have plenty of flannel and moustaches and wigs are cheap and easy to find. And it was funny, due to our Southern roots (well, Kiley's from Missouri, but still). So we hit up a few "fancy dress" stores and swapped clothes around, and came up with the following finished product:

Although it was slightly disturbing to see just how well my boyfriend could fit into my jorts, it was also hilarious! The night was one that just begs for further photographic evidence, so see the following as well:

 Believe it or not, Joe found another Daisy! This one, whose name was Rob, is from Virginia and was in the Army, weirdly enough... maybe I stayed inside our demographic a tad bit too well.

 These jokers are some of my other friends. Chris is on the left, so you can appreciate how funny it would've been to get him into a tutu. As for Aidan (on the right), he refused to come as a girl, because he'd made his own Ironman costume that he only wore briefly before Hallowqueen, and, as he said, "Tony Stark doesn't cross-dress".

 This is only one in a series of pictures where Kiley and I did our best to pose like dudes, but kept being told by all of the actual guys that we were doing a terrible job. Then again, I think fake moustaches make it pretty legit to begin with. In the background you can see one of the coolest features of Aidan's costume: he'd taken some "tap on/tap off" lights and put them inside goalie gloves so that he could turn them on and off whenever he pleased! This turned out to be quite an asset on the dance floor :)

Finally, I took a picture with my flatmates, who came as "The Man", Snape, and Dumbledore, respectively. By this point, my moustache had already sweated off, after a valiant run.

Probably the funniest thing from the night (besides all of the men in makeup, obviously), was seeing how ill-adjusted we were to our respective opposite gendered attire. The whole time we were walking over in the cold, windy weather, all of the boys kept complaining that they were cold, their wigs were getting messed up, and they didn't have sufficient pockets to hold all of their things. "Welcome to girl world!" we told them. Then again, I have new respect for mustachioed men, because those things are itchy and uncomfortable, and I had the most difficult time blowing my nose! Besides, I've always taken for granted that dresses are much cooler than long pants in the middle of a crowded, sweaty room.

So there you have it. I've had some great Halloweeks in the past, but this one was definitely one for the ages. At the very least, I have some serious blackmail material on pretty much every guy I know!