Hanwell Carnival - A Great Success - And NO Rain

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Viv Elliss reflects on the ever popular carnival

So we spent the whole week leading up to the big day gazing woefully upwards and consulting various online weather forecasts. Is it going to rain on Saturday? Probably. After all it’s Hanwell Carnival. It always does. But on Saturday we battled not with rain but with gale force winds.

The procession starts at Hanwell Community Centre. For reasons I won’t bore you with I had to pick up 280 helium-filled balloons from the Baptist Church down the road. Have you ever tried carrying armfuls of balloons in heavy wind? Easy it ain’t.

MP Steve Pound was on his usual, effervescent form. I don’t know where he gets his energy. I can hardly keep up with him.

In Elthorne Park the highlights of the music stage were local band Et Tu Bruce and Xantone Blacq currently number 1 in the soul charts.

On the community stage, hosted this year by Westside FM’s Charlie-May Bingham and Alexander Fenn, there was a diverse mix of song (Ealing Rock Choir, Macathnic, Love2Sing), dance (Masquerade, Verite Ellis, Ealing Street Dance Academy) and sports (karate and camogie) Karen Freeman showed everyone what Zumba is all about. And local Triniboi Joocie brought some real carnival flavour – sorry flava - with his Soca act.

No Carnival’s complete without a dog show –and this year ours featured a fancy dress category – won by Hamish – the old sea dog. The Supreme Champion was a wire-haired Hungarian Viszla called Zsiga.

The Hanwell Carnival supports many local charities – there were over 45 there on Saturday ranging from parochial – like Hanwell Homeless Concern to international – The Hanwell Friends of Sebastiya

``We’ve had some fantastic feedback from the charities that took part” says Carnival chairman Colin Chalmers, “the carnival gives them a vital opportunity - to raise their profiles, draw attention to their campaigns and, of course raise money while taking part in a great community day out”.

Anyway 2012 done – better start on next year now, What do they say? Roll on, roll off, roll over.

 

 

Viv Ellis

 

18th June 2012