Carnival Night

Our new village has a carnival. Lots of large villages have a carnival, but ours is a big deal.

 People start to fill up the car parking fields from mid afternoon, and by the time the carnival starts the whole village is packed. 

These folks were ace. They were 'Zimmer Fame' and they did a brilliant and energetic dance routine to 'party rock anthem', using sticks and zimmer frames.

 

This was the Yeo Valley float.

This was my favourite. Not so humorous or exciting as so many of the others, but it wasn't Mr Flintstone on his dinosaur that made it so brilliant.

It was this woman who was following behind the dinosaur on foot. She walked with a stick and wore a big fur coat and a wig, and had a sign around her neck saying 'Mother-in-law-a-saurus'.

The exhaust from the 'dinosaur' covered her in an almost constant cloud of smog, only improved when the machine started to get away from her and she had to frantically shuffle, stick manically pounding the road, to catch up.

I know it shouldn't have been nearly so funny as it was, but the sight of her scuttling after the smoggy 'dinosaur' was hysterical.

Tasteless to the extreme, these were the Somali Pirates, complete with hostages tied to the mast which they only picked up as they went around. The float itself was just a bit tasteless, but massively improved by this chap...

The H.M. Customs Officer in his little boat who pursued them throughout, coming alongside when road space and crowds allowed.

The Inbetweeners did two laps of the village like this, then on the third lap...

They pulled! We were all so pleased for them!

There were so many floats and so much to see. They were all brilliant and had clearly taken so much work. But my favourite part of the whole thing came later.

The best bit for me, by far was dancing into the night to a samba band ,with half the village in the square. I had Fred strapped to my back,and Jack was dancing with his friends. The atmosphere was fantastic and I could have stayed there until dawn, if the samba band and children hadn't tired eventually.

Half the band are either parents or teachers from Fins school. In this photo we have both the schools Head and their media teacher!