It's my favourite non-Christmas-related festival of the year tomorrow: Halloween.

I've always been mad on celebrating it and love the fact that it kicks off a busy and fun time of year. Halloween, Bonfire Night, my birthday (!), Christmas, New Year... The next two months involve trying to cram in loads of get-togethers, combined with gift-giving, copious amounts of food and drink, and good will all-round.

I always start thinking about Halloween about a month beforehand, and plan what I'm going to wear if I'm heading out to a party. This year though, it's kind-of fallen a bit flat. I haven't booked a table at a suitably spooky venue, or organised a trip to the cinema to see something scary...

I did carve a pumpkin on Saturday - I've switched from the traditional Lancashire swede because pumpkins are infinitely easier to gouge at - so we've got the demonic grinning vegetable side of things covered. Actually, is pumpkin a fruit, what with all the pips?

Important questions.

Anyway, my mind is so preoccupied - I guess is the upshot - that even my favourite time of year has lost its sheen.

My internet research on melanoma is keeping me occupied. It's also scaring the bejesus out of me. Which is appropriate given the time of year.

The clocks went back this morning, so I suddenly feel the luxurience of extra time. Another hour in bed, another hour in front of the telly, another hour not getting up and dressed... Having a bit more time that you need - surplus time - feels like such a treat. Like once a year we get to rewind a bit and relax, not run to catch up withourselves.

I've always preferred the clocks going back, not forwards. I'm a winter person - born in November so perhaps that has something to do with it. I never really understood the clamour for summer. The ache in people; willing rain, snow and ice to dissipate and warmer weather to appear.

I remember asking my mum once, when I was little, why a holiday advert celebrated "uninterrupted blue skies?" I couldn't understand the benefit of a boring, plain old blue sky when one strewn with fluffy clouds seemed so much more pleasing.

Being teased for my pale complection became something I resented but I didnt make huge attempts to change at first. I was cautious with the sun after a couple of nasty buring incidents in my youngest years, involving liberal doses of calomine lotion afterwards.

Comments at school, uni, work... People liked to feel there was someone paler than them, and that someone was always me. I guess going on sunbeds one summer and a holiday in which I burnt myself pretty badly changed my attitude. I could go brown if I wanted to - if I subjected my alabaster flesh to liberal quantities of UV in high concentration.

Fake tan always looked just that on me; fake. Streaky, gravy-brown swathes shaming me into covering up even further during hot months. I could never get it to look 'natural'. Tanning seemed the only option. Yet still i tried to be cautious at all times, and never let myself O.D.

But now I'm looking at avoiding the sun altogether, and feeling a real sense of queasiness at the thought of sunbathing.

I'm waiting on the results of my biopsy to determine how 'deep' this melanoma goes. Will it be 'in situ'? Will it be an early stage? Will I have got lucky? Or will it be something more sinister? I won't know until 9th November so, till then, I can only hope and pray it's gone. And my life can go on.

OK, I have first post nerves...

What do I start off with? An introduction to my life? A joke? A quote from someone famous? An emotional out-pouring?

This feels weird.

I suppose I need to get the hang of putting my thoughts out there, for the whole world to ignore.

As an underachieving, under-ambitious writer I guess I'm used to that. Particularly as I don't actually write. I sub-edit other people's work. Sometimes it's really badly written and crummy, but at least they wrote it. I never did pluck up the courage to get that novel written... not even a short story or vignette.

I've developed a real loathing for people who are massively productive and scuttle off to their MySpace accounts to write reems about their tube journey/death of cat/murderous thoughts. Obviously I'm filled with pure, unadulterated jealousy.

But there's also that impotent arrogance, niggling away every time I slice extraneous words from flabby workaday copy: "I could do better than this!"

Jesus. If I could do better, why am I working as a TV Listings Editor? Why am I copying and pasting the programme description for One Tree Hill into a copy field, while numbly inserting indignant British 'u's into America's colorful lexicon? A monkey with 2 weeks' training would be defter and more engaged in the task at hand than me.

So, anyway, enough about how cheery and successful I am.

I'm not here to bleed my heart out about how, in spite of being hugely driven, busy, happy and downright nice, I often feel the need to put my thoughts into words. Publicly.

Nope, I am here drivelling on because I have just been told I have malignant melanoma.

News as traumatic as it can possibly get.

And I reckon having a space to moan into might give my family and friends a break and allow me to say the things that are probably too dark, self-indulgent or silly to say to anyone's face.

Happy reading.

Helen x