Henoween

Hen parties. Even the phrase makes my face curl up in memory of spendy weekends wearing the same hat/t-shirt/amusing headgear as a big gang of women you don't know too well. My friend Kate got married back in May, when I was overdosing on chorizo at Primavera Festival, so six of us went away this weekend (she's honeymooning in January, just to spread out the celebrations even more). Kate loves horror films, chocolate and bee-keeping but, rather than a nice genteel bit of honeymaking, she and Kieran decided we should rent out a former asylum in Dorset, Isolation Hospital, and have a scary movie marathon. But first, we had to decorate the place - in green, orange and black balloons, plastic spiders, glow-in-the-dark ghosts and a 'razorblade' shower curtain.

I'm a coward. I do not like horror films, especially when you're watching them in an otherwise beautiful house made of corrugated iron that creaks on the half second. Far more fun was the enormous eight mile walk we did across the Dorset coastline, propelled forwards only by our desperate need for cream tea. Here's Noel and Helen just before we sang Wuthering Heights at the top of a hill.

Everyone's equal on a hill. You say 'hi' when you bump into someone on the way up, and 'hi' when you bump into someone on the way down. Half-way up the very steepest climb (the kind where you're clinging onto the bare earth by your toes and make sincere promises to yourself to do more exercise), I had a lovely chat with a jaunty seen-it-all 79 year old. Then we went home to log fires, big glasses of wine and some games on Kate Cards - a customised set that Kieran made using pictures of the hen over the years. Yes, that is her in a Saw mask. No, I did not know what a Saw mask looked like before this weekend.

Henoween. Even with the fear factor, definitely better than matching hats, pole dancing classes or screechy nightclubs. Happy married days, Kate and Matt.