A moment in the playing year. Brotherton is the last Carnival of the season. And the first time without you, Debs. This year we had the lovely Steve as our float driver again. We wanted to take him home with us, but Helen said he and the lorry had to go back to Stourton. Oh well!
Players this year were myself, Georgia, Natalie, Bex, Stewart, Lizzie from the Foxwood Steel Bandits; Vicki, Ruth and Karen from Steel Rising, and Varshika, Amy, Henry and Joe M from the Leeds Silver Doves. Daisy couldn't play as Lola had worn out all possible babysitters.
The Brotherton and Byram Carnival is the brainchild of Helen Finister, who left Leeds, a few years ago, to run a pub in Brotherton, just off the A63. Helen's father, William came from the West Indies to live in Leeds way back in the 50s and was one of the original players in the Esso Steel Band, famous and fondly remembered in these parts in West Yorkshire. It is great honour that it is his daughter who books us year after year to wobble around over the A1M1 playing all this year's favourite tunes. [Sorry, Steve, the driver, not wobble at all].
The rain just held off, and I believe that it is also rainy season in Carriacou. Debs, to whom this letter about life in Leeds -schools and steelbands -is addressed is actually having to return, temporarily, to the motherland next week, having fallen foul of the CRB check expiry date experience.
I will spare you all my thoughts on the value of these money-spinning private business slips of paper till a later date. Meantime, here's hoping Debs will be back in the UK long enough to join Foxwood on its autumn season of gigettes here and there [or as Charlotte usually describes them . . "another fine mess . . " Well, there have been moments along the way].
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