The march to Halloween...

It's pretty easy to see what holiday Derry holds closest to its heart.

As Halloween approaches, the entire city has jumped on board to get prepped for the big celebration on Monday night - billed the biggest Halloween party on the whole of the island.

Seemingly hole in the wall pubs have added cobwebs to their corners and strung corpses from the ceilings. Every window in town has "Happy Halloween" or the likenesses of various zombies painted across the front. For the last week, costumed tour guides have lurked around the Guildhall. And every block has a store selling costumes and other festival flair.

It makes it easy to get excited about the big day, even more so now that I've found my costume. In a slight throw-back to the early days of Halloween parties at UT (of which consequences shall never be mentioned again), I decided to update the old "dead prom queen" costume and pay homage to my name by going as "Carrie White" from the Stephen King novel. For a mere £5, I snagged a money, sparkly prom dress from the cancer store, tossing in the added bonus of knowing my purchase would be helping to cure cancer across the country. Then I added a kid's tiara (my head was made for a tiara.. I wore it all day), some fake blood, and a prom queen 1976 sash. In short, it's brilliant.

For the Mitchells, Halloween has always meant an unofficial weekend in Derry but alas, this year the southern Mitchells didn't seem to take the hint. Our friend Geoff came in Friday and we planned to have three other friends, Markus, Aaron, and Richard, come up from the north. But they bailed at the last minute, leaving just Geoff for the weekend and Mike on Monday night. Undeterred, however, we've had a fantastic Halloween weekend.

We started by staying in on Friday night. Eager to save a little money, I planned to make some pasta for the flatmates. When I invited Jay, he suggested that we spring for meatballs instead. So, one tiara-topped trip to the store later, we dug into the task of mashing meat, bread and other spices together and then baking them in the oven.

My prior cooking abilities were limited to such things as vegetable pasta, chicken pot pie (reheated), and anything that came with all of the ingredients in a box. Amazingly, however, our meatballs were phenomenal.

After digging in, we decided to pull out the O'Gradys, a delightfully cheap Bailey's knockoff, and a box of "Worst Case Scenario" playing cards. For the rest of the night, we laughed and debated the proper courses of action in such devastating situations as delivering a toast in the Netherlands or accepting a dinner invitation in Iran.

Terrifying stuff.

The next morning, we woke up for an accommodation office sponsored trip to Bushmill's Distillery and the Giant's Causeway, the prize of the North Antrium coast. Bushmill's was a bit lackluster - although a fat, naked Celtic warrior slicing the air with an ax was delightful - but I did get to be the official "whisky taster" at the end. That involved sitting down with five shots of whisky - three Bushmills, one bourbon, and one Scotch - and decided which was best. Surrounded by Bushmill's paraphenalia and with Agnes the tour guide staring down at me, I chose Bushmills. Definitely Bushmills. For my efforts, I was rewarded with an official whiskey tasting certificate.

Giant's Causeway, I imagine, is a breathtaking place in the summer.

Yesterday, however, it was less than stellar.

It started to rain as we stumbled off the bus and by the time we were climbing the paths at the top of the cliffs (sans any sort of wind breaks and wearing sneakers and jeans) it was full-hurricane weather. The wind would literally knock you off your feet and the rain hit so hard - from every direction - that it felt like hail.

When we finally made it down to the actual Causeway - which resembles a landscape of stepping stones and towers - I couldn't help but think it wasn't the safest of endeavors to be clamoring over the tops of the rocks as the wind knocked us about. Still, I hope to return there under better atmospheric conditions.