Friday 10 July 2009

Carnival Chown

For many the Fourth of July is Independence Day. Apparently, in Bristol, it was Carnival Day. In the centre of town the annual spectre of St Pauls' Carnival was in full swing whilst on the outskirts, a rival attraction was bubbling into existence.

Once upon a time the Thornbury Carnival was a yearly attraction, but then one day it fell to the wayside and somehow seemingly fell into the annals of time. Until now, 2009, the year of The Return.



For those organising it, it was a massive project with everyone learning what was involved as they went along. It developed into a beast of a production with a fair, hundreds of stall holders, musicians, the Red Arrows (quick bit of credit - the pictures of them here were taken by my dad) and of course, the parade.

The morning parade gave way to the afternoon's activities on the Mundy Playing Fields. As musicians played and stallholders traded, kiddies paddled in the community paddling pool and screams of delight carried on the wind from the fairground. All whilst picnics took place on any available spot of grass.

It was a lovely day with gorgeous sunshine, the only thing was, I was in the windiest spot of the playing fields and as gusts of 30mph rushed through (no seriously, according to the weather report, that's how fast they were at times - and that explained a lot!), it did get a little bit scary in my gazeebo and all my beautiful displays had to be abandoned in favour of a display that was low to the table, as not even sellotape and 'Blu-Tak' could hold the display down at times! This is what it ended up looking like (not quite what I had planned):

Oh, and I forgot my tablecloth, so there was a mad dash to Tesco in the morning as well... Let's just say I learnt a lot from this stall!

Despite the wind, I am looking forward to next year's Thornbury Carnival and it looks set to be even bigger than this year's!