Our Carnival Queen for this year is Abbie Forbes who is 10 years old and currently attends Water Orton Primary School. Helping Abbie on the day are her two princesses Darcey Hodgins (age 6) and Ebony Shand (age 8), and her princes Dominic Barker (age 5) and Jack Patrick (age 4). Be sure to give them all a wave as they make their way around the village.
All eyes were on the weather once again for the Carnival this year.
Whilst the 5 day forecast was looking good on Tuesday, as the week progressed dark clouds were slowly forming over both the village and the committee!
Happily, as it turned out the showers weren’t too bad and this year’s Carnival was a great success, from the rather damp procession right through to the rocking set from the live band, Mia and the Blackhawks.
Sales of programmes were certainly up on last year and the fair and stalls all seemed to be busy. The arena events were popular too, including fantastic falconry, energetic dancing displays and the yearly highlight – the Tug of War.
Tug of War
Unfortunately the Digby struggled to put on a full team this year, but at the eleventh hour Coleshill Young Farmers stepped in to fill the gaps. Despite their gallant efforts, however, they were unable to cope with the might of The Dog’s team, who actually won every heat, including a further competition against the Young Farmers on their own! So come on, Digby drinkers, the pressure is really on next year.
Special Guest
A special mention must also go to ex Aston Villa star Tony Daley who was this year’s guest of honour. Tony was a fantastic guest who was happy to engage in a bit of banter, have photos taken with the kids (of all ages!) and played a large part in the day’s proceedings. He was a great guy, who even sent a text the following day to say how much he enjoyed the day and how friendly everyone was. He went on to say that if Water Orton United’s goalkeeper was anything to go by, he would struggle to get in their team – apparently he only managed to put one penalty past him!
The committee hopes that you all enjoyed the day and are already looking forward to next year. In fact, the theme for the floats has already been decided at last week’s meeting and it’s Decades. So whether it’s fifties rock and roll, sixties mods or wartime memories (and that’s just for starters) with this much notice, you’ve really got no excuse!
Photos of the Day
Thanks to ace snapper Sharon from The Digby, there were plenty more great photos taken which are on display here on our Carnival gallery page.
The following is taken from wots-on.org website:
The great and the good of Water Orton all scrub up very well, as you can see!
Having somewhat foolishly offered to do the photography, Jayne and myself had a very busy night. In fact, apart from the meal, we didn’t stop shooting until midnight! All the photos that I can publish are shown by clicking on the link to the gallery at the bottom of this page.
Predictably, as the evening went on the shots got a little more outrageous and the queue of people a little more entertaining, so I would like to thank Jayne for sorting out all of the people who were a bit worse for wear and getting the money off them while I took the photos.
I’d also like to thank Derek and Tony Barnett for helping me out when I was having a bit of a stress because we had to move the backdrop half way through the evening which completely messed up the lighting!
Can I Buy a Photograph?
Most of you have probably already bought photos, but if you didn’t or would like some more, you can order these on the gallery page (see link below). I have put reference numbers on the bottom of each image, so please make sure you complete all of the required information and I will happily oblige. After all of the effort that you all made to look your best for the evening, it would a shame not to have a photograph as a reminder.
The cost is £5 for a 7″x5″ print in black mount, or alternatively I can email a high resolution version of the image for you to print however you wish.
Click here to view the Black Tie Ball gallery on wots-on.org
A fantastic time was had by all at the Carnival Charity Black Tie Ball that was held on Saturday 18th May.
The ball was held at West Midlands Golf Club at Barston Lakes directly after the Golf Day, which you can read about here. The evening included a 3 course meal followed up by a live band and was enjoyed by over 200 people.
One of the highlights of the evening was a charity auction which included a football signed by Birmingham City players, a football shirt signed by Aston Villa players and a framed rugby photograph. The items were ably paraded around the dance floor by glamorous assistants Emma Kerr and Debi Patrick, which might go some way to explaining how they raised over £800 …although it doesn’t explain how the Blues ball fetched more than the Villa kit!
Other highlights included prizes of bottles of bubbly, the Heads & Tails game and of course the fantastic band, The Groove Monkeys, who kept everyone entertained as they danced the night away.
The golf day and evening was a great success, raising £3,000 towards the sustaining off the Carnival and bad weather contingency.In fact, the following day the manager at the Golf Club told us that they took more money at the bar than they had for a very long time and had had to re-stock completely!
If you were there and enjoyed the evening, please let us know by commenting below. If you couldn’t get tickets, the Committee apologises for this, they actually filled the venue’s capacity and the event pretty much sold out in the first couple of weeks.
Whispers have already started about doing the same next year, although with the amount of work involved and how close it fell to the Carnival itself this year, September 2014 is being considered as a more suitable time of year. What do you think? You’ll hear about any developments first either here or on wots-on.org website.