Memories are made of this

There were lovely things happening in her town. It wasn't all doom and gloom.

Esther loved the carnival that came to her town- usually in July; just before school holidays when kids were let loose in a safer world.

It felt like Christmas again when tree lights were switched on and front room windows danced with imaginative creations. Spirits were higher. Folk kinder whilst this time towns-folk made plans as to what they might do or wear. It seemed that some thrived on the pure fun planning/dressing up for their carnival. Where every-one who was anyone, or no-one come to that, turned out to fill their town. From the council houses next to the spreading fields and giant pylons that strode the land. Close to where a plane had fallen leaden from the sky and where a German pilot had been lost. A lover. A friend, a dad and son but who to their own townsfolk then just a burnt out shell in another burnt out shell buried in the soft earth that left its mark forever. After the war was done the hole became a pond where weeds and reeds tumbled and sprang and where children paddled unaware of the dangers that lurked below the surface as the carnival waited.

This day was the next best day to going for a day to the sea-side at Skegness. The carnival though was of course closer to home and so everyone could join in. The familiar Weetabix lorries, that still straddled the Highways and By-ways then, was then a wonderland; full of fairies and elves-watched carefully by their Brown Owl!

At the head of the procession would be the Sander man Band. Folk dressed in navy and white skirts or trousers with shiny shoes and the instruments they clung to like precious babies.
There was always the lady who dressed her bike in a rain-bow display of crepe. Her bike pulled a cart containing dolls whose clothes she said she had spent the whole year knitting!

From the crowded pavements people threw their loose coins high as they aimed for the dressed lorries passing by them. Of course some missed and rolled to the ground and so children gathered up these rolling coins and put them in their pockets; unaware the money was intended for a charity.

Later in the afternoon, after this procession had snaked round past the Co-op; where Esther's mum would draw her Divvy. The post office, where her mum would stand and wait for
her National Assistance and the Working Mens Club where her step-father drank stinking ale with this money.

Then late in the evening came a magical torch-light parade that re-lit their slumbering town whilst the elderly either slept on in their beds or peered through the window to see what was going on and remember how they once ran the streets in youth when their own dreams were still tender.