Glastonbury - the Jamie Oliver, naked carnival

This town has long been famous for three things: the Festival, the Tor and the Abbey. Don’t add the Glastonbury Carnival to this list; it is a damp squib.

Actually, the Carnival – although I never knew it existed and its website claims it has run since 1854 – is quite spectacular, only in a kitsch, un-local sort of way. Its floats would suit Notting Hill or Bridgwater, even Rio de Janeiro, and have probably done so, but they are not what I would call a local carnival. They are merely professional floats and carnival participants, all in search of somewhere to run their self-perpetuating show. It is fine, but it is nothing to do with what a local carnival is all about.

Glastonbury Carnival is the Douglas Sirk of carnivals – it is slick, showy and professional but completely over-the-top. Even for a carnival, it is a chocolate box, Christmas scene, complete with bambi and red nose reindeers. The floats are not made up a few weeks beforehand by local people, with pride in their shop or factory - does that even exist anymore? - but are on-going, peripatetic floats that have no local allegiance, no home and no relevance whatsoever; it is simply a carnival with no purpose. It has no spirit.

I can’t even remember the name of one single float; they are identikit, generic efforts, suitable for the entire carnival circuit in this area, including Bridgwater, Weston-super-Mare and all the other places. Where is the local schools float? Where is the Abbey float (with the Jesus-in-a-manger routine)? Where is the Glastonbury Festival float? Where is the relevance to Glastonbury at all? This is simply the Jamie Oliver of naked carnivals.

The floats are enormous, their thousands of lights powered by giant battery units towed behind, like an American juggernaut, only passing through the tiny streets of this quiet Somerset town. The Stewards have yellow, fluorescent jackets that have ‘Ilminster Carnival’ written on their backs. And the entire excuse for the carnival is not local pride or anything but simply to raise money for the next event, various stewards and loud-speakers urging you to ‘remember that we cannot maintain this event without your support; please give generously’. When you hear those words you usually expect a noble cause but this is anything but.

Why do the people bother? What we need is the Return to River Cottage Carnival, a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, grass-roots carnival, devoid of any metropolitan glitz.



Glastonbury Carnival website:
http://www.carnivalchronicle.com/glastonbury/