Hallowmas: the Souls of Dead Trees

Jof went to work but I didn't. It's still tidy-up week, something I was doing to earn money for the Lego Star Wars battlecruiser, so I chose to do the loft. As soon as I saw the ladder, I lost my nerve and ran away. Being called Scaredy-baby doesn't help.
Instead we trod the highway in search of dead trees, to collect their errant souls for Soul Cake Thursday at Bens' house tonight. Straight away we found a dead birch tree which was suddenly really easy to climb but the others were all fragmented so weren't really dead, and were un-reapable. We counted 5 damaged trees in Swingpark alone, but it's clear that the council had cleared most of them up by the time we got there. We met Harry and he said the park was closed the day after the storm because of all the damage so we missed out on a few Dryad wraiths there.
It's tough waiting for the Halloween PuddleParty so I got out all my toy cars and made a traffic jam in my room, complete with abuse being shouted from vehicle to vehicle.
For a while there it rained but eventually the time wandered around and we walked to Bens' (checking out the trickle treating roads, many illuminated pumpkins were in evidence) where I met Erin and Elizabeth but no JBs, 3 of us were skelingtons but Erin was the skelington of Lady Gaga, one-upmanship there. BensMum had party games lined up and eerie phantasms covered the walls to protect us from vengeful spirits. The Mummies sang dead'n'buried songs because wine makes them do that.
Then we went trickle-treating. The roads around my school are historically very profitable and soon our little booty-buckets were full. I reckon we tried 30 houses but half of them had run out. Additionally, being only a group of 4 nominally under the control of 2 drunken laughing Mummies made us a better donation prospect than the mob-handed vagabonds and bandits that were knocking on our home door. Poppy and co were a group of 7, the others were in sixes so our supply of sweetie-bribes was decimated in no time.
We ended up at Erins' house which is always good for running around space and beer and even older songs for the talls. Various tricklers came and we handed out all the existing stocks, and started giving away our own profits from our hard-won buckets! Being kind is one thing, I reckon Jesus has got nothing on us. Jof joined us for several beers and she was dressed as a very convincing witch but we broke her broom. We played nicely so they kept on nattering and we got home at 10.