On the news a couple of days ago there was an item about a children's marching band in Dudley. It brought back some childhood memories for me. I was never in a marching band - the kazoo would be far too difficult an instrument for someone with my musical talent - but I do remember them well.
We moved to the house where my family has lived ever since in 1963. I was six years old. It was a very different time back then and though I don't remember much about it, I do remember the two carnivals that took place every year. There was a carnival in Coseley and another in Bilston. The venues were different but the forms were the same. A procession of decorated lorries and marching bands wound through the streets where the public, including the infant version of me holding his mother's hand, lined the pavements. We cheered and threw pennies onto the lorries and ate candy-floss and toffee apples. We followed alng the streets so that as the procession went on the crowds became thicker. Finally it finished at a park - Jubilee park in Coseley or Hickman Park in Bilston - where there was a fete with really great, sophisticated hi-tech entertainment. There was a stall where you could win prizes by throwing ping-pong balls into glass fish bowls, another where you could use a hook on a stick to snare yellow plastic ducks as they drifted by - prizes being awarded according to the number painted on the bottom. There were stalls where you could throw darts at a board full of playing cards - a prize for hitting three different cards - or try to throw tennis balls into a tin bucket. There was tombola for the mums and a beer tent for the dads.
It was marvellous fun and the highlight of the year for us kids.
But even then it was a tradition that was already dying out. My dad recalls the carnivals of his childhood and they were bigger, better, brighter and even more fun. Of course that's his nostalgia talking just as the description above is mine. Everything was always better in the past. The Golden age is always the one that was ours, the one when we were kids.
Nevertheless it's true that the carnival tradition was dying. I can't remember when exactly they stopped having them, probably sometime in the seventies, but I can say that they are no more. Who would want them now anyway? Those of us old enough to feel the sugar-rush of nostalgia as we recall the sickly sweet clouds of candy floss on a stick, those of us who write blogs using the latest technology to tell the world about how things were better in the good old days, those of us who want to be six years old again.
But that's nostalgia talking again. I doubt if such an event with it's low-brow, low-tech, good-natured amateurism would appeal to many people.
Pity really.
Anyway, as I was trying to find information about the two local carnivals I ran across something that caused the nostalgia to swell inside me again, something that, very briefly made me six years old again. And here they are, a brace of YouTube videos that someone has thoughtfully posted showing the two carnivals as they were in 1964, when I was seven. I'll bet I'm in the crowd there somewhere. Eating a toffee apple.
We moved to the house where my family has lived ever since in 1963. I was six years old. It was a very different time back then and though I don't remember much about it, I do remember the two carnivals that took place every year. There was a carnival in Coseley and another in Bilston. The venues were different but the forms were the same. A procession of decorated lorries and marching bands wound through the streets where the public, including the infant version of me holding his mother's hand, lined the pavements. We cheered and threw pennies onto the lorries and ate candy-floss and toffee apples. We followed alng the streets so that as the procession went on the crowds became thicker. Finally it finished at a park - Jubilee park in Coseley or Hickman Park in Bilston - where there was a fete with really great, sophisticated hi-tech entertainment. There was a stall where you could win prizes by throwing ping-pong balls into glass fish bowls, another where you could use a hook on a stick to snare yellow plastic ducks as they drifted by - prizes being awarded according to the number painted on the bottom. There were stalls where you could throw darts at a board full of playing cards - a prize for hitting three different cards - or try to throw tennis balls into a tin bucket. There was tombola for the mums and a beer tent for the dads.
It was marvellous fun and the highlight of the year for us kids.
But even then it was a tradition that was already dying out. My dad recalls the carnivals of his childhood and they were bigger, better, brighter and even more fun. Of course that's his nostalgia talking just as the description above is mine. Everything was always better in the past. The Golden age is always the one that was ours, the one when we were kids.
Nevertheless it's true that the carnival tradition was dying. I can't remember when exactly they stopped having them, probably sometime in the seventies, but I can say that they are no more. Who would want them now anyway? Those of us old enough to feel the sugar-rush of nostalgia as we recall the sickly sweet clouds of candy floss on a stick, those of us who write blogs using the latest technology to tell the world about how things were better in the good old days, those of us who want to be six years old again.
But that's nostalgia talking again. I doubt if such an event with it's low-brow, low-tech, good-natured amateurism would appeal to many people.
Pity really.
Anyway, as I was trying to find information about the two local carnivals I ran across something that caused the nostalgia to swell inside me again, something that, very briefly made me six years old again. And here they are, a brace of YouTube videos that someone has thoughtfully posted showing the two carnivals as they were in 1964, when I was seven. I'll bet I'm in the crowd there somewhere. Eating a toffee apple.
Enjoy.
Coseley carnival.
Bilston carnival.
No comments:
Post a Comment