on the calendar, and one I don't get to go to as often as I used to.
I always remember Maynardville Carnival as a highpoint of the first
half of the year in my early years. (Says the guy in his twenties.)
Other than my birthday, of course. My attendance at the annual event
was dependent on being invited with by my friend Stephen, and it was a
real family occasion. His parents would settle down in the Greek
stall, and me and Stephen, often with our friend Alastair, then
proceeded to wonder around unsupervised, playing the carnival games,
browsing for second-hand books (hoping for comics and always going
away disappointed), and eating lots of food.
The Maynardville Carnival is a fundraising effort for the Community
Chest, which is 'focused on Restoring Hope and Enhancing Communities
within South Africa'. So while you're enjoying yourself, you know
you're also helping develop those less fortunate. But you're probably
not thinking about that while you're stuffing your face with food and
losing your money on fun carnival games.
One of my favourite parts of the carnival is the book sale. You don't
even have to buy any books to have a good time there, just browsing
through books and magazines from the 60s and 70s can be a real laugh
in itself. I end up walking away with a few books every time, and this
year was no exception. There were many Shakespeare play texts and I
narrowed my choices down to A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest,
and King Henry V. I am currently reading the last one, first time, and
throroughly loving it. My favourite speech is in it, 'Once more unto
the breach...'. And thanks to Peter Anderson, a professor at UCT who
is an expert on Shakespeare, recommended the chorus prologue of Act
IV, which is also quite excellent. (Subsequently I've been told to
read King Henry IV Part 2 by someone else, so I'm getting into lots of
Shakespeare in the near future.)
This year it was only my friend Stephen and I going to the carnival,
and on the last night too. It was a real blast. We went on the Ferris
Wheel, an impressively big affair by South African standards, I think,
and admired the scenery of Wynberg, trying to identify obscure details
in the distance, and find his house. It wasn't visible from the top,
but the general direction was easy to determine, and that was enough.
After that the festivities were kicked into high gear with food at the
Austrian stall. I had meatloaf with mustard and a roll, and Stephen
had eisbein, an ambitious start to the evening. With this we had a can
of Austrian draft, can't remember the name now, but it was
serviceable. I could imagine Arnie drinking it in his youth. This
first meal was followed up by two shots each of schnapps, with the
inevitable references to 'Inglourious Basterds'. Both flavours, I
forget this too, were quite horrid, no better than the burn of
tequila. But it was a good start to the night.
For the rest of the evening we wandered around, had some
chocolate-covered donuts, I had Chinese (with a few admiring glances
from the female Chinese stall manners, unless that was beer goggle
vision impairing my judgement. I smiled back anyway.), with free Black
Labels due to the poor math skills of the guys at the Chinese drinks
stand. They were probably distracted by their intense delight at
people attempting Dragon Breath, or Dragon's Fire, some sort of potent
shooter. Then even more hilarious to them was people doing Suicide, a
line of these killer shooters.
Another funny stall was the Philippines, where they were hosting
karaoke. People could choose their song and sing it for everyone.
There were mixed results. But mostly funny. A highlight of the stall
was later in the evening when we noticed a man dozing, completely
oblivious of the bad singing, just sleeping until he was roused from
his booze-induced stupor.
Stephen tempted me to sing something with him, but I wasn't drunk
enough for that. In hindsight, and actually at the time according to
his argument, there was no better place or time to break my karaoke
cherry, as it were, 'cos that was the most obscure crowd I could've
sung before. Oh well, next year.
(I will update this post with pictures soon.)
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