Carnival!
This year is the first year I’ve been about for Cromer Carnival which is a week of festivities including the crowning of the Carnival queen 1 (Saturday), airshow2 (yesterday), fireworks (tonight) and fairground (all week). I believe it’s one of the larger carnivals in North Norfolk.
Last night was the big parade. Cromer is closed to traffic and floats, bands, dancers and becostumed people paraded along the streets to throngs of happy, cheering and quite tipsy people. The Zozo and I went out to see this spectacle, eat burgers, hotdogs and doughnuts and generally join in with the revelry.
Being my first carnival I wasn’t sure what to expect but I was very impressed by the quality of the floats and costumes. I was also stunned by the number of young girls in leotards twirling batons. Either they were imported from round the county or Cromer has the highest number of twirlers per capita of anywhere in the world.
Parade over the Zozo and I investigated the fun fair and the Zozo treated me to a few goes shooting prizes with cork guns (she won 3 prizes, I only managed 1) and a go throwing surprisingly light balls at clearly weighted cans. Neither of us won a prize although I managed to cheat and catch the ball on a rebound without anyone seeing giving me a fourth shot. Didn’t help 
We went to sleep that night with full bellies, smiles on our faces and the sounds of revelry drifting on the night air. All in all a great evening.
1 which was more of an afterthought after the long and boring speeches by local dignitaries
2 the Red Arrows pitch up and do their thang. I missed that unfortunately
Oh! the simple life. The additional rubbish collection, the police vans tucked into the Police Station car park staying out of site so as not to pre-empt trouble, the extra stewards who have to stop drunk people jumping off the pier, all wonderful fun.
Never, ever try and win on the coconut shy or any sort of “skill” based game. The pop-guns are bent, the cans are weighted and the hoops don’t actually go over the coconuts. Think of it as charity giving.
Roll on the 42nd Cromer Carnival 2011.
The clean up was very quick and efficient. You’d not know there’d been a parade the morning afterwards.
We got sweets out of the “skill” based games and had fun, which is the important thing. Zo was much better at it than I was and it would have been far cheaper to go to the shop and just buy the sweets directly, but that defeats the whole point
“The pop-guns are bent” Does that mean I’m bent as I did really well on those? :s
Nah, you’re just good at shooting round corners