Sometimes so much happens to you in the space of a few days that you wake up and think ‘hang about that didn’t actually happen’….or did it. Last week started with a budget that said ‘we’re not going back to austerity’ and ended up with laser shows in the docks and fireworks and dancing in the High street that showed it had caught the mood of the people. We don’t care, we’re having a party. I was sat in King Square reading my copy of the Bridgwater Mercury thinking ‘hmm only 4 pictures of Ashley Fox in it this week, he’s slacking’, when I looked up and a slow moving throng of purple faced aliens drifted across the far side of the square. I went back to my paper ‘Cow falls in ditch’ ah, the big news stories! Then thought a bit, looked up again..nothing..they’d gone. Like that scene in Shaun of the Dead when there’s a hint of ‘something funny’ going on.

But this was carnival week. Some said the best one ever. But then they don’t remember the post war carnivals when (so I was told) the highlight was literally throwing fireworks AT each other, clearly  remembering those glory days of Monte Cassino and Arnhem.

You can tell its carnival time when you walk round a corner and there’s a line of Mexicans chatting to a line of Zulus and you think ‘Brexit capital of Somerset? Nonsense! Everybody gets on here’.

Apparently

But people were very happy this year. Until it came to the judges and the results. A 48-hour delay? Was it contested? Oh no, and we have the US elections to get through next. A technical hitch with the computers apparently and a recount. Ha! Modern technology! In the olden days we’d have paid people in the back of a pub. (Satirical reference there to the 1870 disenfranchisement of Bridgwater for electoral corruption)

My high light of carnival is of course the squibbing. After the parade is over and you literally can’t move on the High Street for the masses massing. Then the plaintive voice of a carnival judge ‘5…4…3…7..18..er..12?’ and then whoosh the whole street goes up in smoke and flame.

Meanwhile at Bridgwater docks this week the balloon which became a moon which became a sad forgotten site on a cold October night was suddenly remembered in a son et lumiere spectacle of lasers, spotlights sweeping the docklands while the voice of Neil Armstrong rang out ‘that’s one small step for a man one giant leap for..oh hang about I’ve still got me slippers on’.

Thinking

As the searchlights scoured the night sky for Steve McQueen on his motorbike trying to leap the border fence into neutral Switzerland I began thinking ‘Maybe we don’t need to build those lookout towers to stop people leaving town after all?’

I thought to myself ‘Party Town This’ (even though I’ve never seen Star Wars) and I thought never mind that we still don’t know the results of carnival..we live in Bridgwater..we’re all winners.