Jane Caldow – The carnival floats

Jane: For me it’s not that unusual because it was my childhood, I grew up with it. You know we used to go in watching the Ryde Carnival, that one slide I showed you, the floats and as far as I understand it I’m sure they used to provide the dresses for the Carnival Queen and the Maids of Honour and I’m sure there’s something online with the Carnival history that would say that.

But the exciting … you know you used to go into the Union Street shop to watch the Carnival coming along and waiting for that procession to come up. In those days it came along Melville Street and along Cross Street and then it went up the High Street. That was the route and you would see the first bit and the Ryde Carnival Queen was always these beautiful flowers and it was the fresh flowers of the Borough of Ryde and just the excitement.

Because in those days we didn’t have all these other things you have today. You went to the beach; we went to the Cinema. There wasn’t all the stuff that children have today but we were all very happy (laughs). Probably happier weren’t we in some ways I think.

Simon: Yeah, focused.

Jane: And there wasn’t the outside pressure either was there? There was family time and friends time and everything, but yes, the excitement of that and in later years, in the sort of late ‘60s, early ‘70s, we used to do our own float. We would be a group of foot …we used to do the Children’s Carnival and everything which was great fun, absolutely great fun.

Simon: Which of the floats do you remember?

Jane: Oh the floats were fantastic and sadly we don’t have … I found one blurry slide of the song, ‘Up and Away’ the balloon one, and so that year they had a big basket and there was a big net with all the balloons in, and my mother said another year there was … when all the fake furs came in, and they had the girls as if they were the wild animals in a cage or something and they were all in the fake furs going … but we don’t have photos of that. There’s one blurry one of the hot air balloon.

Simon: I’ve seen a photo of that.

Jane: Have you seen a photo? I’d love to see it. And there’s the Concorde float. You’ve seen a photo of that because we did that on year because that’s down at the Historic Writers afternoon. People said, “We’ve got Health and Safety, there’s me up on the wing. Oh, we had great fun.”