Fat Tuesday

The toilet queue in CC's Coffee Shop consisted of a red indian, a giant baby, a man in a pink silk tuxedo and top hat, a woman with a rubber ring around her waist, a real policeman and a male nun. Mardi Gras Tuesday is indeed fat, if not phat. It is Lost Vagueness on a city scale.

Outside the streets of the French Quarter were a hazy cocktail blur: two white trash girls posed against a dustbin lorry, a group of pirates played ten-pin bowling in the street, a man with eight nipples was feeding eight plastic babies and an alien on a bike cycled by. It was a Monty Python daydream.

I was on the verge of exhaustion having spent five nights on the beer and mezcal begging for beads. For beads is what Mardi Gras is all about. On Fat Tuesday I had to summon my last golden beads of energy to enjoy the mayhem. Tired, I had risen to the sounds of Mardi Gras TV. Watching all those people screaming for beads made my bead addiction twitch and I had to get out on the street.

Canal Street was rammed. Families had set up camp with chairs and so much picnic food that even Yogi Bear would struggle to get through it all. The Zulu krew parade, celebrating its one hundredth year, was advancing down the street, the people on the floats chucking out throws. Throws are the coveted beads or, on the bigger parades, better. The Zulu krew is famous for its golden coconut throws. I don't know what came over me but I became fanatical about catching throws. It was pathetic. There I was, a grown woman jostling and jumping above the eight year old infront of me to get those beads with a special glowing medallion or a giant plastic toothbrush. I had become a bead whore. But in my defense, so had the whole town. In the end I gave the kid the toothbrush, but I was hanging on to my beads! For someone who doesn't like Made in China, useless, plastic tat I was possessed. I needed beads, and no matter how many you have you always want more. I didn't need the beads quite as much as my bead-hungry friend Dan, but I still wanted beads. Collectively we grabbed 20kg of plastic beads, which are now being distributed at Dani Gras in The Saloon, Minneapolis (reuse, recycle etc.).

We tried various techniques to get beads thrown at us. Laying on the English accent and pleading seemed to work. However, the men on the floats wanted boobs for special beads and they were getting none of that, thank you very much, I'm British don't you know. No matter what Angela and I did (apart from bear breast) the boys always got more beads, even Drew, when he didn't want them. Tom was the Bead King with the winning method of doffing his flapcap madly in the air and proclaiming, "I say, excuse me, can I trouble you for some beads perchance."

On Fat Tuesday the beads were flying: From floats, balconies and locals handing out beads to the beadless. On the infamous girls-gone-wild Bourbon Street girls were going wild. Boobs were being flashed on the balconies and in the street in exchange for beads.

Music flowed down the streets. The parades were full of school marching bands and the French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny were full of second lines. These impromptu brass bands strike up a jazz beat in the street and you can tag along waving a handkerchief, umbrella or just grooving.

Mardi Gras is all about consumption - beads, beer, hurricanes and hot dogs. It is beautiful to see a city so alive after such a recent tragedy, even having the gall to have cocktails named after it. Mardi Gras is exhausting all consuming - perhaps that's what makes it Fat Tuesday. I was warned before I went that I would leave with my tail between my legs, and that I did.