I’m writing this in Ardfield with the rain coming in sideways off the Atlantic, the kind of mid-term break holiday weather that explains why our ancestors needed to create an elaborate festival to mark the end of summer.

Fáilte Ireland told RTÉ this week that Halloween will be worth over €40m to communities around the island, and a woman from the organisation declared that “Halloween did not begin in Hollywood”.

There are seven official Home of Halloween destinations this year and I went through the list twice with the good glasses on. Kerry is on it. Cork is not. Kerry, God help us, whose main contribution to the supernatural is David Clifford’s feet.

Leap, which this newspaper has been calling Ireland’s Halloween village for years, has carried on regardless. We spent the bank holiday Monday there, and enjoyed a brilliant seasonal A scare at Samhain tour by the great folks at Gormú eco-Adventures.

We had friends and their kids down from Dublin and they got to enjoy An Mascallacht, West Cork’s old tradition of masking and disguise at Samhain. We all got our creative juices flowing with some old moss and bits and pieces from the surrounding hedgerows and had some very creepy creations at the end of the session.

Then we were taken on a spooky walking tour of the village, full of creepy stories and West Cork history. The kids learned all about the bean sí, the cailleach and the púca and were enthralled. The walk ended with some traditional Barmbrack and yours truly got the ring this time, which was news to my lovely wife.

Afterwards we piled into Connolly’s of Leap with the kids for wood-fired pizza and listened to a céilí band with a reggae back beat who were raising money for a charity in Jamaica - exactly what you’d expect in Connollys on a rainy Monday. It’s fair to say that a very good time was had by all.

Someone in Fáilte Ireland needs to get the memo that Leap is the Home of Halloween. Or maybe we should keep this a little secret between us?

From Leap to the grave

Seeing as we’re in a fairly morbid time of year, I’ve been thinking this week about what might be going on my gravestone, inspired in no small way by the hangover I brought out of Leap.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my adverts.ie feedback is the best way to mark my presence on Earth. I joined on  January 2 2008, back when the Celtic Tiger was still twitching, and since then I’ve racked up 29 positive reviews and not one negative, a cleaner record than most of the Dáil.

“Sound fella. No hassle,” said one man in 2023. A lad called Bryston gave me an A followed by seven pluses back in 2020, and I’m not sure what I bought off him. Last week I took the Dart out to Bray to meet a lad about a Mac mini.

The adverts.ie handover is one of the great unwritten Irish rituals, the pair of you making small talk about RAM upgrades while peering at a serial number as if you’d know a dodgy one. By Sunday morning he’d called me “a gent to deal with”.

Twenty-nine flawless reviews on Adverts, lads. Put it on the stone.

Belgrave win for students

Sunday was a good day for anyone who likes their strongmen a little less strong. In Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat to the Students’ List, a movement born out of nearly two years of protests after the deadly station roof collapse in Novi Sad.

People danced the kolo in Belgrade and high-fived the same police who’d been chasing them around with batons very recently.

Their candidate list has more than 160 doctorates on it, so Leaders’ Questions should be interesting. The same evening in Brazil, Lula, aged 80, beat Flávio Bolsonaro to win a fourth term, at an age when most Irish men are being told by their children to stay off the ladder.

It’s the hope that kills you, as Fachtna would say.

Lunny was a trad legend

The news came through at the weekend that Dónal Lunny had died, aged 79. If you’ve ever sat in on a session anywhere in Ireland, you’ve heard him whether you knew it or not. That chugging bouzouki under the tune is basically his doing.

The Tullamore man, who grew up in Kildare, went through Planxty and the Bothy Band and still found time to produce Kate Bush and Elvis Costello.

His work with Andy Irvine is very special indeed and I would urge you all to dig out the In Time documentary on the RTÉ Player to see them perform together recently. It’s beautiful.

I have Old Hag You Have Killed Me on in the kitchen as I finish this, which seems about right. His likes will not be seen again. What a contribution he has made to our culture.

Rest easy, Dónal.