Burnham Carnival 2008

It was glorious weather as an estimated 10,00 visitors came to the town. There were reports of traffic queuing right out to Wrekin's Farm and parking spaces everywhere were at a premium but everyone appeared to be in a great party mood and there were crowds at the Carnival arena as early as 9.30am.
Sgt. Phil Morley of Essex Police told there was only 4 arrests all day, 3 for minor assaults and one for drink driving.
The festivities started the week before with the crowing of the Carnival Queen, Iona Evans and her princesses, Alison Aspinall and Grace Black.
During the week there was darts matches, dominos, quizzes, the ever popular baby show, history nights and exhibitions, bingo and of course the famous Stevens Funfair.
Carnival day started at about 10.00 am with the now traditional races between our emergency services, RNLI, Ambulance, Fire Service and the Marine Police. The referee, Diane Defontaine did her best but the level of cheating was remarkable, everyone got completely wet and it was all great fun.
Tiptree Jam had paid for a stage outside Natwest Bank and this was put to early use with the combined choirs of St. Mary’s and Burnham Primary performing and then the country dancing of Southminster Primary and the modern routine of Dance Fusion.
We moved hastily back to the arena to watch the ATC Drill display and Tai Chi and then quick dash around town to look at the Shop Window Displays.
We managed to photograph all the entrants in the children’s fancy dress, although there did seem to be a caveman that kept evading me?.
The Blue Falcons gave yet another superb gymnastics display and the crowd were pleased with the now regular slot of the largest gymnast flying over the heads of the carnival court.
New this year was the entertaining Bernie Bennett with his amazing tight rope act. Also new was Tony de la Fou who juggled his way around the arena.
Another quick dash this time to the Royal Corinthian found us with the visiting carnival courts and a few dozen previous carnival queens who had travelled to Burnham from all over the UK. All the queens and VIPs were treated to a carnival tea, complements of the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club.
I was fortunate to spot neighbour Alex Willsher who escorted me to the roof of the yacht club and I had a grandstand view of the next event. Martyn Carrington piloted the lovely Lucy Foster as they performed an amazing aerobatic display over the Crouch with Lucy doing handstands and amazing manoeuvres whilst hanging onto the wing.
Andy was assisting me on camera for the day but as we are also half the trombone section of Rayleigh Brass it was a dash back up the High Street and their 5.15 performance. We are very grateful to Jim Morton of the Queens Head who came out of his very busy pub to ensure we were suitably refreshed for the concert.
Our performance ended at 5.58pm which gave us a little breathing space to store the instruments change into our evening attire and photograph the adult fancy dress contestants at 6.00pm.
We left the stage and meandered our ways around the waiting floats and believe we got at least one photo of each of them; they kept moving so we may have got more!
Then back to the stage to meet the VIPs and then a few hours of sheer amazement as over 70 floats passed us. The detail is to much to describe but I hope our photos will give you an indication of the atmosphere of the night.
My thanks to Andy Harrington for assisting me during the day and to the talented Sophie Campan who joined us for the evening and showed us how to take proper photos. Credit also to Graham Potter who kindly took some pictures of the band whilst we were playing.
Between us we took several hundred pictures and of course we don’t have room in the magazine to show them all to you, as in past years we’ll put them on a DVD and you will soon be able to purchase these. All money received will be passed to the Carnival Committee to add to the funds they have already collected.
The following day I visited the committee who spent all day in the Carnival Hall counting the collection and at 8pm they called it a day with a figure already exceeding £8500, at least £2000 higher than the previous record.
It was a fantastic carnival and I’m quite proud to have be part of the committee and to have done my very little bit to make the day such a success. My complements to John Randall and the rest of the committee who did such a good job.