Sunday 2 October 2011

Carnival Days


Back in the day when brown wall paper was fashionable and "Sindy" was the only doll to have, my family became involved in the summer carnival in the town where I spent my childhood.  It started when our next door neighbour persuaded my Mum to let me enter the "Carnival Princess" competition.  This mainly involved wearing your best frock, smiling nicely and walking up and down in front of the judges in a straight line.  Although I wasn't picked to be the Princess, I did get to be crown bearer - that's me in the photo below carrying the cushion.  What the picture does not show is that the Princess had a whole entourage of attendants which all had to be dressed in pretty dresses and accompanied the Princess on her carnival float at the front of the procession.  And that's where our involvement started - Mum volunteered to help out getting all the little girls ready and so began our long association from the carnival.  For many years we helped decorate the float - a mammoth task that happened the evening before the parade and sometimes went late into the night.  Whilst I was little I made many appearances on the float, in many different costumes.  As time went on, Mum actually became part of the committee which organised the whole event and I even joined during my sixth form years.  As far as I know the carnival still happens and mum and I often talk about our "carnival days".


This memory was bought to you as part of Sian's "Story Telling Story".  You can find more great stories here.







12 comments:

Jane said...

your poor mum, she must have been so busy and Sindy was always the best!

Sian said...

It's funny how one thing leads to another and how the willing Mums always get roped in to help!

This is a great story, full of happy memories which are really brought to life with that wonderful photo and your appropriately regal layout! Thanks for this one Lynn

Miriam said...

What a lovely memory and a fabulous photo! Aren't mums wonderful?

angelfish (fiona) said...

What lovely memories. I didn't even get as far as 'almost princess', being far too much of a tomboy to enter the annual competition!
I know exactly where you're coming from, with the getting back into blogging, I aim to do something about it this month.

scrappyjacky said...

That's a great memory.....I still remember carnivals as a child.

Jimjams said...

Great to get to the bottom of a family tradition - love the page!

humel said...

What a lovely memory to share :) I am particularly intrigued by your journaling though. If I'm reading it correctly, depending on whether you mean the town or the county, you might recognise the second photo in this post: http://ispeakmelsh.blogspot.com/2011/09/260-of-365.html

Ginger said...

Lovely memory! The layout is a wonderful addition to the story :)

furrypig said...

your story totally took me back to when my sister was our local carnival queen! She was so pretty and was very popular and I was a wee bit jealous of all the attention she got, but she worked really hard it wasn't all fun and games and they did a lot of good work for charity. i should try and dig out some old photos!

Ifa said...

Love your picture and what a great memory.

Alison said...

Lovely memory and great LO!

Becky said...

A great story and I love the photo. We had our carnival in Wickford a couple of weeks ago with carnival princesses from near and far attending.

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