Moonlight Parade

Well done to all involved in the BoF this year, it was a good one. It's easy for the locals to be jaded about the whole thing and stay away, but once you're there watching it you really do appreciate how you have to be there. The amount of work that goes into it, the fun people are having, the atmosphere - it's brilliant and a real credit to the island. Long may it continue.

Well done at last, too... for the organisers+police finally seeing commonsense and not hiding the view from the inner road at West Park. Barriers are needed to stop people climbing over the wall, fair enough - but in years gone by this was achieved by wooden hoarding which looked awful and mean.

Last year the wire barriers were covered in plastic sheeting to stop people seeing the parade, with the flimsy excuse that they didn't want crowds along there because of the safety aspect with all the traffic - despite that being the widest 2-laned road in the island (now 3, but hey!) at the time and the one of the broadest pavements too. And what did people do? They lifted up the plastic that year and watched the battle anyway, and no harm was done. It wasn't even as if they could pay the standing-only fiver to get in, because the available space (like there's any shortage!) 'sold out' and they wouldn't let anyone in.

This year they got it right, at last. I managed to turn up 15 mins before the start, got in for a fiver to wander about, and managed to get myself a nice spot to stand on a wall. Behind me people were watching along the inner road and I haven't heard of any safety incidents. Let's stick to this policy please, people!

My simple camera turned out to be extremely poor for stills, and I can see why people need the big chunky dSLR cameras to get good results in such low light. Even with the aperture wide open, and the ISO cranked up, it still needed exposures too long to be clear, and the "noise reduction" software in the camera smeared and blotched the results too. Waste of time. But the camcorder managed a fair job, although the bizarre sound fault is still a bit (alright, a lot) annoying. It sounds muffled, gritty and unpleasant, and cuts out all the time, only starting to record after a couple of seconds of silence! One of these days I'll buy something better, but I'm waiting for something with all the features I want that satisfies fussy reviewers before I dent the credit card. So I'll mainly carry on with the silent movies, unless there's something that might be worth hearing, however bad.

If you can excuse the sound, here's my first effort from the Moonlight Parade, my favourite float this year - the Beatles Yellow Submarine by Grouville