s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

So, these last two weekends we have been in local Christmas parades. Once again we reprised our roles as pirates, and had a great time. Robert, the guy who runs Westside Studios and organizes the floats for the parade, made us a special new pirate ship this year. We were part of a double float, with the newly refurbished “Black Pearl” hooked up directly behind (and thus chasing and fighting with) the blue “Vicotry”.

The pirates were better dressed than our badly outnumbered English opponents.

The Wellington parade on the 18th was all very orderly, to the point where we were not allowed to hand chocolate gold coins out to the kids for “safety reasons”. Barriers had been erected along the parade route. The day was beautiful, and they estimate 60,000 people turned up, which is pretty good considering the whole region only has a population of 400,000! The waist-high barriers were fine, but towards the end of the parade they were using 7′ barriers, and it felt more like parading through a prison camp.
The Hutt Christmas parade on the 24th was a bit more chaotic. There were no safety barriers. The crowd was mobbed in the street, in places we could barely squeeze through and the ground-based pirates (who were allowed to hand out sweets) could not walk alongside the float in places due to the press of people.  We are lucky some little kid didn’t go under the wheels.

Before the second parade Robert thanked us for our pirating. With our costumes and all we are now one of the flashiest floats in the parade. He offered us the loan of the pirate ship float if we wanted it for a party or something in the future. Pretty cool! I don’t know what I would use a priate ship float for, but the offer is certainly appreciated!