The Day After

No feathers or coconuts this year... but Guinness?

So, the sun comes out and all memories of yesterday’s tornado warnings have faded. Now, it’s simply the day after. They say here that while the city of New Orleans is busy going completely bonkers (or just a bit more bonkers than usual), everywhere else it’s just Tuesday. With day after day of sunny, dry, warm weather in the run up to Carnival, the weather gods waited, teasing us and chose the big day to flex their mean-spirited muscles. Rain, wind, lightning and tornados all came out to play, but they couldn’t stop Mardi Gras. It just meant that everything had to start rolling early.

Local and experienced revelers take their job seriously. It’s not Tardi Gras, no indeed. If you’re going to do it right, your alarm is set and you’re up at four-thirty in the morning and fixing to head out to catch you some Skeletons, Skulls and Bones. Down in the Tremé, that antique and much battered neighbourhood adjacent to the French Quarter, the drums are out before the sun is up and Skeleton men are banging heavy wooden sticks on doors to wake everybody up, making a ruckus to get the party started. At the same time, all over town, the black Indian tribes have already had their Cornflakes and coffee (and firewater too, presumably) and are donning Golden crowns and chanting Indian prayers, ready to bust out, ready for hoombah, ready for the day ahead.

Meanwhile, most visitors to the city - and there are many hundreds of thousands of them - are nursing hangovers from Monday night’s excesses. They’re rubbing their eyes and reaching for aspirin in slightly irritated disbelief that their hosts are already up, getting dressed, drinking and cranking up Wild Magnolias funk tunes loud through the speakers. Over at Funk Headquarters, the party guests are ringing the door-bell at 8.00 am, ready to start drinking; champagne and Boudin King cakes and the Jukebox is already banging out a hefty selection of Mardi Gras anthems to get the day started right.

The last party-guests are finally kicked out into the street at 10.30 am and, locking the door behind us, we join the throng of costumed pedestrians all heading the same way, in the direction of Franklin and Royal to join the aggravation of Bacchanalian machination.

It’s usually at this point that I make my excuses and head off down Rampart street in search of Indian Feathers and Zulu Coconuts - but yesterday it wasn’t to be. The Zulus had to roll out early and the Indians had seemingly scrutinised the morning television weather forecast.