October is, without a doubt, the best month of the year. I could list a hundred and one reasons why; most rather cliché and almost all relating to Halloween! Yet, moving past the pumpkins and the ghost stories, I’ve also realised my tendency to look on October as some kind of pinpoint for the year. Even if I’ve forgotten March, August and December, I’ll still always be able to tell you what life was like in October. For this reason, it feels pretty important to get October right, or at the very least, to get it interesting! I’m happy to say that October 2024 is one that I’ll look back on with a great deal of fondness. Whether this is due to the darkening afternoons spent in the library, the coffee shop hunting in the Norwich lanes or my total absorption in my folk horror dissertation (fitting I know…), it’s been quite a beautiful time. 

That being said, October can also be a bit of a strange month for finding a balance. Astrologically, we’ve just passed the Autumn Equinox, a point in the year where day and night are of equal length. This means that, whilst adjusting to the start of the academic year, our bodies are also acclimatising to a completely different natural world. So don’t be too hard on yourself if you haven’t got the balance quite right just yet and I’ll try to practice what I preach! 

Taking a slight detour back into September, I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came to our ‘Open House’ event! For those who know the paper well, this was the first year in over a decade that Concrete has departed from our usual ‘Big Meet’. You can imagine Jamie and I’s relief when we got to see so many of you there and realise how excited you were to get involved! It was also a wonderful way to show off our new office and to open up the Concrete Archives as a way of learning about all who came before us!

We’ve also had a lovely time getting to know the new team. Their endlessly creative takes on such a broad range of topics, as well as their ability to work to tight deadlines makes me so incredibly proud to be a UEA student, as well as a member of Concrete. Adjusting to the paper’s schedule, laying up articles and working as such a large team can take a bit of getting used to and I have to say that they’re doing it brilliantly!

So what does Concrete have in store for you this time? With it being Black History Month we have a range of superb articles including Daisy Lester’s piece on Mary Seacole and Dame Elizabeth Nneka Anionwu in the Science section, as well as Naa Yarley Yartey and Mar Devonport’s insightful feature interview with MP Clive Lewis on colonialism. Unsurprisingly we also have an array of Halloween themed pieces! Tania Casali’s ‘Haunting Locations to Explore This Halloween’ within her Travel section column and Polly Dye’s ‘Dressing Hot for Halloween: A Guide to the Best Costumes of 2024’ in Fashion make for some brilliant seasonal reading!

So Happy October! And if you see any ghostly editors or ghoulish writers stalking campus- we haven’t actually gone mad (yet)- we’re just having a spooky scavenger hunt!

Photo Credit: Ella Pamment