More Halloween. It’s school break and Ingrid was home alone all week. One day the rest of us came home to a fully decorated house, with bats and pumpkins and paper ghosts, and spooky balloons jumping out at us around various corners.

We have a large garage, thanks to a previous owner of the house who, according to rumour, had a small taxi business. Most of the year we don’t use it as a garage because we’re lazy and keep the car parked outside. Instead we use the garage for storing all kinds of other things, such as bicycles, outgrown children’s clothes, flowerpots, winter tyres, camping equipment etc. But when the temperatures start to go below freezing, we squeeze all these other things together and make space for the car.

Our old Volvo fits perfectly. There is enough space left over on all sides that I can drive in carefully rather than anxiously. And there is even enough space left that I can wrangle my bike out without having to move the car.

Six pacman-shaped spider eyes and a multitude of viciously sharp teeth.

The shape of my pumpkin and some curved “scars” on it inspired an abstract design.

Sweden has adopted Halloween with enthusiasm, but some parts are more popular than others. Trick-or-treating is very widespread; carving jack-o-lanterns not so much. The kids and I really enjoy it though, so we do it every year.

The supermarket has “Halloween pumpkins” but the choice this year was unusually narrow, and we had to make do with weird pumpkins. Mine was oval; Ingrid’s had a hole in it.

Every year I’m somewhat surprised that the kids come through the carving process without cutting themselves or anything else (apart from the pumpkin).

The weather turned warmer again, and it’s still kind of light – or at least not fully dark – both in the morning and afternoon, so it’s still a pleasure to cycle to work.

The showers and changing rooms at work are always clean and tidy. Which is a very good thing, because there are no shelves or benches in there, and I always end up piling at least some of my stuff on the floor.

Pre-Halloween face painting – Adrian wanted to be Frankenstein’s monster.

The sun is all hidden behind buildings by the time we go home. Only the tops of the trees still get some.

There is something about bright red that makes it not come out right in photos. This is a perfectly normal piece of red fabric that I bought for Ingrid’s Halloween costume, but no matter how I expose it, it looks fake.