Jill Rees: Welcome Press

At this time of year the wind and the rain make you pull your warm winter coat closer round your shivering body, layered as it is with vest, shirt, cardigan, waistcoat, jacket and outer coat. Men chase their runaway scarves across the street and women battle with wind-wrung umbrellas. On the news, a family were trapped in their car overnight and had to be rescued from flood water by life raft, and the rain shows no sign of abating.  As the nights draw in, and daylight weakly peeks down at us for only a few hours in the middle of the day, we wonder if we will survive the long winter months to come.

Last week this all ended as we celebrated Carnival. Bridgwater Carnival is the third largest in the world, after Notting Hill and Rio, and people come from all the Continents to see it. Visitors this year include people from as far afield as Canada and Australia, from Brazil and from Africa. One young Ugandan visitor Sam Kiggundu from Kampala, who runs his own Media Studio helping youngsters in Uganda to learn media skills, tells us the Carnival is shown on TV back home.

150,000 people visited this year to watch the 150 carts parade through the town centre. Normally, the battle is against the elements, as cold blasts from the north east drive us back into to shelter of our homes for warming mugs of tea caressed between ungloved hands, before braving the storm once more. This year, however, luck was with us. The wind died down, the moon came out bright and clear. We crowded eight deep along the side of the route, eating hotdogs from the stands, sweets, smoking cigarettes and youngster sucking on throat lozenges, risen from their sick beds where they spent the week battling against the extremely common cold.

The atmosphere was friendly and warm, with chatting, laughter among families; streams of teenagers marching Indian style single file up the street then back down the street again, in the hope of bumping into friends. Men turned up carrying freshly bought beer, and neighbours huddled in darkened first floor windows to get a good view from the warmth of their bedrooms.  Late but welcome, the show began.

Started 406 years ago to celebrate Guy Fawkes night, Carnival is the hub of town life. Almost every local family is part of a Carnival club, bound by a fierce loyalty. The process of raising money to build your club’s themed cart begins as soon as last year’s procession ends.  Taking a theme, perhaps Pirates of the Caribbean, Ghost Riders, Cleopatra, Showtime or Vampires, a moving illuminated float is built. Some 22,000 light bulbs, illuminating moving parts, swirl and twist in the spotlight and people in costume dance or pose on the trailers, pulled along by tractors, huge generators bringing up the rear. Children take part in the dancing and miming to the thunderous pop music backing the action, held on by belts and clipped tightly to the float.

Roads into town close in the late afternoon, and traffic stops. Local families harry down the streets carrying survival gear and accompanied by excited children snuggled up in variety woollen hats and thick anoraks. Strategically placed stepladders help families to see over the heads of the 150,000 others who come to see the spectacle. relatives from Canada, friends from London, spies from other Carnivals to be held later in the area, Granddad and Grandma come over for the day, new boyfriends and new babies, all crowd in to this small town to see the world-famous show.  

It started in 1605, when Guy Fawkes plot to blow up Parliament was foiled in Westminster. Protestants in the West Country felt more keenly than anyone how lucky they were, and wanted to celebrate extravagantly by encouraging all local people to parade colourful themed carts through the town.

Bridgwater in particular, was the town who provided most of the manpower for the doomed Monmouth Rebellion a generation later in 1685, and this still open wound has made the celebration of freedom even more enthusiastic.

During the Monmouth Rebellion, when Bridgwater residents joined the forces of the ill-starred Duke of Monmouth to fight the King across a nearby field, local men were slaughtered in the battle, or subsequently deported to the West Indies to work as slaves and exiles. Others were hanged by Judge Jeffries, known as ‘The Hanging Judge’ and no doubt had they been able to fit them all on the scaffold they would have.

To this day, the local area is not allowed to have a Cathedral city, or a university, or any regional power to rival the Queen’s. It is even said that when her Majesty rode through the town on the train recently, she pulled the blinds down as the train passed through Bridgwater. It is still a town of rebels, and Carnival is an excuse to let off steam about an unforgotten and unforgiven past, and, it has to be said, an unrepentant past. Bridgwater folks are wild!

When the floats have finally run through town, townsfolk gather in the centre with long poles, the end of which are laden with gunpowder, and do a kind of strange dance with the lit poles. This is known as ‘squibbing’ and is a Bridgwater speciality. Squibbing is part of the ‘adult’ element of Carnival. It takes place late at night and only those who have survived the cold, often with the aid of shelter in a pub as the evening went on remain to take part. 170 squibs were lit this year, held inside lines of burning oil along the High Street.

Traditionally Carnival was held on the Thursday nearest Bonfire Night, when Guy Fawkes defeat is officially celebrated in the country, and ‘Black Friday’, the day after Carnival, the town remained closed for ‘recovery’, i.e. many ‘tails of the dog’ and daylight drunken episodes as pubs remained open but shops and banks were closed.  Now however Carnival is held on Friday, and on Saturday night, the town field holds the firework display. Bangs and blasts send dogs scurrying under kitchen tables.

Thousands of pounds are raised during the night, with most of the money going to local charities such as BIBIC, which looks after disabled children. For the next few days, floats crawl home down the local roads, and are dismantled and displays stored for next year. Tractors and trailers are returned to the fields, and life gradually returns to normal. Clubs get together in their local pub to debrief after the show. Did they do well? What went wrong? Why was the winner better than them?  Over a pint, plans begin for 2009.

Armed with bright images of light still burning in the backs of our eyes, with memories of blasts from the fireworks and heat from the squibbing and the fires on which lovingly-made effigies of Guy Fawkes, sometimes made up to resemble unpopular politicians and dignitaries, are set alight, we settle into the rest of the long, dark, cold and drawn out winter, believing that maybe, just maybe, we will survive until celebrations begin again with Christmas and the New Year.  

1,209 words

© Jill Rees

11^th November 2008

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Tags: Bridgwater Carnival, floats, traditions, West Country habits