A bit cold for Madi Gras?

Courier Column for 13 February

No business like snowbusiness

            There’s a fine display of snowdrops in the churchyard on one of our walks.  They’re spread out under an ancient oak tree which overlooks the wide Rother Valley.

            I feel it’s somehow wrong for snowdrops to be out before there’s been any snow.  And Myrtle just feels its wrong that there hasn’t been any snow.  She loves the stuff.  As a puppy I remember her bounding through her first winter whiteness, unable to understand what these extraordinary cold, wet crystals were doing covering her normally grassy field. 

            Snowless it may be, but it’s certainly seasonably chilly.  The log boiler is working overtime and I’m beginning to regret not having split more wood before the winter and stored it in the dry.  Apart from the fact that damp wood doesn’t burn well or provide much heat, it tars up the system necessitating expensive servicing.

            And it’s the cold that’s providing the biggest headache in planning for Mardi Gras.  I’ve got a ticket for the Fat Tuesday Ball which – a tad confusingly – isn’t on Tuesday but instead is this Saturday.

            The whole thing is billed as the largest Mardi Gras festival in the UK of which, until this year I’m ashamed to say, I was blissfully unaware.  On the Tuesday itself, twenty-one Hastings venues host sixty-seven separate gigs. There’s the umbrella parade with floats, and marching bands and then Preservation Sunday sees a trad jazz and beer festival.

            But the problem is the costume for the ball.  In Rio or New Orleans it’s generally warm enough not to need to worry about exposed skin or skimpy clothing.  But the south coast in mid-February? This is a different matter.    So I’ve sent off for a set of thermals - in black, naturally.  I’ve a gold waistcoat and am searching for something suitable to go round the waist.  And the ensemble will be enlivened with a lace mask and feathered headdress which arrived from eBay last week. 

In the hall itself I’m confident the body heat of other revelers should stave off insipient frost bite, but it’s the journey to and from the venue I’m more concerned about.  And what bothers me is that worrying about body temperature really doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of Carnival.  But I’m still wondering why couldn’t they have waited until the weather was warmer – or even transferred the whole thing to the south coast of Louisiana.