Surviving Valentines Day and Mardi Gras

I feel like a bad correspondent making excuses for not having written sooner, but I can only blame this on Mother Nature. Normally by now, I would have recounted tales of daring-do as we coped with yet another series of hurricanes, but despite everyone preparing to batten down the hatches and test out their new storm shutters, nothing happened. The hurricane season came and went and proved to be a damp squib, but maybe even Mother Nature couldn’t bring herself to terrorise the battered population of New Orleans and Florida with someone called Beryl, Patty, Sandy or Tony. Mind you, we all thought that Katrina was a sweet sounding gal and look how she turned out!
Now we are contending with what is laughingly called “winter” here in Florida. Temperatures drop from the mid 80’s down into the low 60’s resulting in the “snow-birds” who are currently taking shelter away from the trials of a bitter winter up north, adding yet another brightly coloured layer to their already brilliant plumage of matching shell suits, and they scorn the Floridians who shiver and shelter from the elements, while marching manfully up and down the beach boardwalks, displaying their peculiarly orange-hued suntans.
The babble of Quebeçois French is barely recognisable to my French speaking husband as he strains to understand the patois that has become a soupy mix of various and ancient languages. In addition to this, we try and keep pace with gabbled Hispanic conversations, the rise and fall of Creole tones, the overlay of Russian, and the heavily accented voices of the “Noo Joisey” retirees who hale from New York. For some, Florida means hot tubs but we have found that it is more a case of being immersed in a melting pot of people from all corners of the globe.
With the carefully labelled “Holiday Season” over and done with, Florida at this time of year launches itself into the ancient festivals of both Valentines Day and Mardi Gras. On Valentines Night, we danced under the stars at the Hollywood Open Air Beach Theatre while a couple of singers who pre-dated the Beatles by a good fifteen years, gave of their sugary best. Couples both old and young, held hands and moved to the music, happy for once to forgo the usual Country and Western beat that sends them into serried ranks of line-dancing. This was romance at its best with no place for Hip Hop, Garage and the other peculiar types of computer-generated noise that encourage the gyrations of the young Miamians, and which leaves anyone over fifty looking mystified and slightly bored.
The onslaught of flowers, chocolates and over-stuffed crimson heart-shaped cushions had hardly ceased before Mardi Gras weekend got into full swing. Because of its geographic situation, South Florida, which is home to a vast number of South Americans, Cubans, and Bahamians, has taken Mardi Gras to its multicultural heart and for the four days leading up to what is known as “Fat Tuesday” or Shrove Tuesday, anything goes. Parades provide a golden opportunity for dressing up in anything that sparkles and glitters, all the while shouting and yelling and performing wild acrobats in order to capture a string of shiny beads thrown from a passing float. The more heavily garlanded with strings of beads, the better one has proved to be at catching both the eye of the thrower and the airborne missile. The “Krewes” who both build and man the floats are skilled in the art of hurling the beads, and Judges of the various floats need protective armour to shield them from the blizzard of jewellery and tiny teddy bears. The West Indian beat of the music, the skimpily clad feathered dancing girls, the shrieks and screams of the over-excited onlookers all combine to create an atmosphere of joyous abandonment, and in order to stave off the hunger pangs, stalls serve steaming plates of Cajun food with such appetising names as Deep Fried Alligator and Boiled Mud Shrimp, all of which might sound unappealing, but which have customers queuing around the block.
The long weekend rounds out with Presidents Day which is the trigger for every major retail outlet and vehicle sales forecourt to have a massive “Presidents Day Sale”, and the beat of Mardi Gras continues until Tuesday night, and then we can all heave a sigh of relief, eat our pancakes and settle down for Lent. We might not have gone through a hurricane season, but after this past week, we feel as though we have!
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