I might be using a touch too much of the Perfect Childhood Potion here but I honestly can not recall there ever being rain on this day. Certainly not from around 1979 (you can tell its sunny from the included photo below) to the mid eighties anyway. Come Burry's Carnival Day you could guarantee sunshine.
And excitement. And hundreds of locals and visitors lining Station Road in order to see the colourful assortment of floats and walkers in costumes. Teenagers back then (before the nanny state gripped everything) even climbed lamposts and hung from the railway bridges to secure good vantage points to watch the parade.
All of the work and build up in organising, designing lorries and choosing the Carnival Queen, it all paid off with interest when the day itself pounced from a ususally murky June. For most Burryportians it truly was/is the beginning of summer.
Myself (left) Father (Gonzo) and younger brother in 1979's Carnival
The carnival procession would start at 2pm in the carpark of the old Carbay Club, which is now the Neptune Hotel. The route was over the Coop Bridge and down along Station Road until the whole thing turned into the park after heading through New Street. Burry Port has quite a large public park with rugby and football pitches, and it is here that stalls and a funfair would pitch up for the day.
As a young boyo my family would all gather in my grandmothers house, near the tiny wooden gilled surgery, that was a darts throw from the park/shops, and had a car park so that family members from Penclawdd always had a place for their always orange~looking cars. My mother, grandmother and aunts would make a giant buffet of sandwiches, crisps, homemade pasties, rissoles and no end of sticky drinks. Everyone it seemed was at my grandmothers house on Carnival Day back then.
I was not fussed with the floats and procession itself, I was always eager like a firefly to head on over to the sugary delights of the funfair, where candyfloss would often fall from other childrens hands and blow in the summer breeze across the dried rugby pitch like neon tumbleweeds. All I remember was being crushed in Jones' newsagents shop doorway as noisy floats passed by, decked out in cardboard interpretations of paradise islands and sets of populat television shows of the time. While an assortment of Draculas, Incredible Hulks, Bugs Bunnies and the odd clown jigged by on rubber feet, holding out buckets half filled with copper pennies that rattled like teeth in a jam jar.
Being a solitary type of boy, I would always try to use the crowds to hide and shrink into so that these strange, mad eyed, usually sports shoe wearing beasts could not find me among the denim and cotton stalks of grown ups legs. Of course down there there were new dangers such as falling cigarette ash and syrup from ice cream sauces.
It was worth it however because the rest of the day was magic. An afternon spent in the park with hot dogs, game stalls, funfair rides and seemingly hundreds of chances to win miserable looking goldfish! (Im holding a goldfish in the photo above but due to the limits of the width of this post its too small to actually see). Every short trousered Welsh pup wanted one of those fish, regardless of how tattered they looked and no doubt come teatime every home in Burry Port had a hastily bought goldfish bowl which stood on top of the fridge like a crystal blister. Fridges were ideal for fish bowls as they were too high and too smooth and cat proof.
The funfair wasn't never going to challenge Porthcawl obviously but it had a nice selection of daring rides from waltzers to the parachutes, which were a type of ferris wheel which stood lazily at an angle instead of being upright and had umrellas over the wheels cars. This was a particular favourite of mine because when you came down from being at the top, it looked as if your rickety carriage was going to smash face first into the baked mud below. Quite a thrill even in those days when homemade 'rides' involved tree swings going over 30ft hillsides.
After the funfair and games, not to mention perfomances by the local brass band, we would head back to my grans for yet more homebaked treats. As you might have noticed, Burry Carnival day left quite an imprint in my memory and its a place in my head which I know is safe from any darker, more morbid thoughts which frequently invade my mind.
Of course as time rolled on and my older self left the salty snacks of my grandmothers oven and found another shaded area amongst rows of beer and ciders, the carnival offered new experiencces for my eager self and I was equally thrilled by them. Come the age of 19 onwards (until the day I left the town) Carnival Day would herald a mornings drinking; weak lagers, sherry and occasionaly spirits, fetched from the Co-op as soon as its doors opened. Crates of ale were carried from there and taken to various friends houses to be thrown back with heavy metal roaring in the background.
It was a fine day in Burry Port, as fine as the sloe berries that were found in the Furnace fields and made into wine.
