FLORIDA DIARY, LAKES AND THE GREAT AMERICAN SUGAR RUSH

Article by guest author Peter Brooker

The Spanish Moss dangled its ghoulish fingers over the wild bush that surrounded Lake Baldwin, especially poignant for Halloween weekend. Lake Baldwin takes the best part of an hour to walk around, and it's a desired route for fitness fanatics, many of whom run shirtless in what I call an overt display of vanity. The wife calls it fair game. Baldwin's eryngo peppers the greens with wisps of violet. But it's second fiddle to the jubilant purples of the American BeautyBerry that throng the fringes of Lake Baldwin.

A very common, but no less beautiful for it, Gulf Fritillary butterfly descends to the grass, its orange and black dotted wings in stark contrast to the lush greens. It's remarkable how green the grass can get here. An entire stretch of green that bisects the new Lakemont Avenue from the even newer Gables is big enough to fit 3 football pitches on, and is completely unmolested by man or dog.

A small gathering of children, huddled around a park bench between the lake and the road, are murdering Jingle Bells on the trombone. Behind them a tyre blows on a BMW as it mounts the curb. "That's what you get, driving while texting!" One kid shouts. He had failed to spot that the driver, at that very moment, was enthusiastically distracted at the sight of several young female joggers with the sweat pooling from their ample bosoms (one pair real, one not) down the shimmering taught stomachs to the tightest of Lululemon running shorts, that gave every onlooker (yes myself included) a moment of lustful escapism. Unfortunately for that poor male driver, it cost him more than a flight of fantasy.

Spearpoint Lake is private, but you can still access it by a casual purposeful walk to the jetty. It's receded some, and the retention lake is dry, bearing raccoon prints. Pan fish are too clever for young Max, our neighbour's son who is telling me of all the fish in the lake. He has had bass, pan fish, gar and pike. But no sign of otters, alligators or the Cottonmouth snakes that will hunt in packs and kill anyone foolish enough to swim in these lakes during mating season.

The Petrified Forest, a play on words and not the same as the kind you'd find on the way to Etosha Forest, has queues 'around the block' on Halloween night. We did three trails through the Rancid Rental video haunted house, dilapidated toy store and a rather unsettling bakery that had peoples faces carved into the pastries. I was not appalled, but there is an uneasy circle that I cannot square in my mind or stomach, at how obsessed Americans are with Halloween.

As I stopped off at a pharmacy, I witnessed a middle-aged plump American lady struggle to swipe multiples of party sized candy into her trolley. What the hell are we feeding our kids these days? Is Halloween just one big sugar rush? The come down being the inevitable onset of diabetes? Or do people just love dressing up in leather and lavishingly applying swathes of make up.

However one cannot be impressed by the levels of commitment some Americans put into this wretched holiday. From the house-sized skeletons that pepper the lawns on Colonial Drive, to the actors that deliver satanic mantras inside the Petrified Forest. "THIS IS MY HOUSE. THIS IS MY HOUSE." One semi naked muscular black boy hissed amidst a room of torture devices.

"It's your house mate," I said. "And I'm leaving."