Mardi Gras - Hastings style

Gathering for the Umbrella Parade

 

 

Hastings has more than its fair share of festivals and celebrations.  I have never known people more fond of dressing up.  So I suppose the idea of Carnival, with all its implications of costume and general malarkey, was irresistible to the locals.  Think Venetian masks and gondolas, grotesque masks from Cologne's Faschingszeit, or the swaying floats of Rio.

 

But this is Hastings, and it's February.  Venice somehow manages to make its winter fogs and mists romantic at Carnival time, when masked figures slip down picturesque alleyways.  In Hastings the wind is howling off the sea and the rain edging into sleet.

 

A great part of Hastings' charm is that it doesn't try to be other than itself.  Mardi Gras would be a bit posh, so the festival here has been renamed Fat Tuesday.  A not entirely felicitous title, since it implies lardies wobbling from pub to fish and chip shop rather than svelte figures glittering with sequins.  But tasselled bosoms and scanty clothes would have laid participants out with pneumonia today if they'd tried it for the so-called Umbrella Parade. "All you need is an umbrella or parasol" the website said.  Actually, you needed a full set of waterproofs over your long johns as well.

 

Your humble servant got the timing wrong, alas, so went down for the gathering at 11 a.m. but had failed to note that the procession was scheduled to set off an hour later.  The cold and rain drove me away  before things got going.  However, I noticed that the small crowd was Blue Peter meets Hammer House of Horror: decorated parasols flourished by children in colourful wellies beside people in reinterpreted Victorian costume, out of the pages of Edgar Allan Poe.  I went and had a cup of coffee and on my return noticed that some of the black-coated Goth types were slipping into a local hostelry to fortify themselves for the off.  I suppose that's what Carnival's about, really: dressing up and drinking oneself senseless. Just like Rio.

 

Antony Mair