It’s not unusual to be sitting at your desk at Red Gate and hear a cheer erupt from a post-lunch game of foosball that has been played with the momentum of an Olympic match, or indeed, the rhythmic patter of a table tennis ball going from one opponent to the next. But the sound of Dracula’s coffin opening is quite something else…

On Monday morning the Red Gate SQL Servery was transformed into a Halloween den, complete with our very own witch standing firmly by the fruit bowl. The unfamiliar Dracula sound rose up every time someone opened the witch’s cauldron soup pot, to poor out their ‘blood soup’. The ‘Taste of Fear’ menu for this weeks food caused some anxious looks as the Red Gaters all lined up to choose whether to have Spaghetti Eye Balls, Stuffed Monster Heads, or Dracula Steaks for their lunch. This continued at the dessert counter where you could pick up Worm Jelly, or Death by Chocolate. Following that feast, you could even grab a toffee apple to munch your way through.

To continue with the Halloween celebrations, some people took their hand to pumpkin carving. As with anything else at Red Gate, the participants didn’t produce the standard pumpkin face you see in windows across the country, but really applied their artistic skills. From the carving of ‘Backup’ into a pumpkin, to ‘Red Gate’ with a gate carved out of the vegetable, each pumpkin differed, and impressed, from the next.

This has been a week of Halloween celebrations like nothing I have ever seen before, and as myself and some of my fellow Red Gaters set off to Seattle for PASS on Saturday, I am sure we will be equally impressed by the Halloween revelry in America. I can’t wait!

Post by Alice Smith