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CARNIVAL CARNIVAL!

Lancaster's Carnival of Culture on Saturday was such a rip-roaring success that I've only just recovered myself enough to write it up. The weather cleared in time, hurray, and about two thousand colourful and happy people took part in the carnival parade, celebrating Lancaster's culture and pouring scorn on those who want to sell off chunks of the city for poorly planned and unpopular retail developments and (even worse-planned and less popular) road building. The buzz is that Lancaster has a better culture than the bunch of cloned high street retailers and winebars that developers want to stuff our cultural quarter with - and this flamboyant carnival, put together in a couple of months without any public funding, definitely proves their point.
The carnival assembled in Alfred Street Carpark (where Centros are hoping to stick their flagging Debenhams), to the rhythms of a steel band and marched up the one-way system to Dalton Square outside the Town Hall, where an Auction of the City took place, with one of the many Men in Suits trying to auction off the city's assets - a fairly clear allusion to current activities within the Town Hall in the opinion of most of the assembly.
From there the procession, carrying hundreds of colourful placards and banners, headed up to Priory Green, a historical public green now earmarked by the cathedral for a carpark, despite massive local opposition. There was live music and fun and games before the procession reconstituted itself for a stroll through town and down to the skatepark opposite the revolting eyesore that is now forming the Kingsway development.
We didn't make it out into the countryside where the new driveway for Heysham Power Station and the Port of Heysham is planned at massive expense to the public and the environment but many of the paraders waved banners and placards opposing it.
Festivities continued at many hostelries throughout the city. At the Gregson bands played from 4pm through until midnight for the entertainment of madly-dressed carnivalistas. The newly opened Park Hotel buckled under the strain as people queued three-deep at the bar and danced their little sparkly socks off to the Solar crew.
The carnival was a brilliant achievement, definitely the best in the North of the UK, and it's worth remembering that not one penny of public funding went into it.
So, a very big thank-you to all those who organised, worked, raised funds and participated in many, many ways to make this event an astonishing success!!!!

Previous stories: 16 - 29 February 2008
Next stories: 16 - 31 March 2008