Day Fifty-One - 31/10/2012 - Cork

     This particular Halloween started out normal enough.
     I had gone to the Bookshelf to catch up on blogging (the caffeine helps), but there were already tell-tale signs of the night to come.  The barista painted his face white, wearing a scratched up, white tee shirt with blood stains.  I sat down at a couch resting on a dismembered hand.
     On the way back home, Meng and I picked up some last minute costume items before dinner.  After dinner we completely unintentionally ran into the beginnings of a Halloween parade.  I later learned that this was the seventh annual Dragon of Shandon parade, put on by the Cork Community Art Link, a group that involves young people in the community in participative art projects.  The parade featured a large number of hand-carried floats, all various interpretations of the underlying macabre theme.  There were skeletons four metres high, playing trumpets.  Alternating between the floats were various bands, dancing, and other local groups who performed in full costume and even got quite ambitious with scaring the crowd.  A particularly eerie giant euro was rolled down the street with a life-size skeleton affixed to the face depicting "Eire" and the harp.  About halfway along the parade, a huge steam train shaped in the face of a dragon started down the street, smoke billowing out of its metal nostrils.  The ten-car train was made up of people walking in the spherical coaches, forming part of an elaborate float.  A massive ship, modeled of bone came next, with moving bat-like wings, barely fitting in the confines of the street.  A dancing group performed next, followed by a huge fish skeleton that wiggled through the streets.  The namesake of the parade formed the finale.  The sounds of two large drums announced its arrival, beating rhythmically, warning of an impending doom.  You suddenly became aware that these drums had been beating, their noise echoing off of the streets, for the duration of the parade, but you only just noticed them.  And then, you see it, the bleached white skull with the massive jawline, the bright pinpoints of light that constitute eyes, the webbed horns on its neck: the Dragon of Shandon.
     After that impressive and unexpected display, Meng and I prepared our costumes and met up with Andrew, Melina, and Alex.  Meng dressed up as a flapper girl, I as a leprechaun, Andrew and Melina as Titanic passengers/young artists/a 1920s couple, and Alex as Walter White, of Breaking Bad fame, after an explosion in the kitchen.