A couple of the many, many Irish dancers in Crawley

After a thoroughly damp and miserable day yesterday the weather turned glorious for today’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in Crawley, a case of the luck of the Irish perhaps?

This parade is one of the fixed points in the civic calendar and one of the events that celebrates the town’s multiculturalism, with participation not limited to the Irish – although a lot of people seem to suddenly uncover Irish roots for the weekend.I had never been along to the parade before, always managing to miss it somehow.  I will admit that I was expecting something bigger, based on press coverage of previous years’ events but perhaps that was just a result of the way the photos were taken or cropped.

The parade certainly rivals the Mela for colour – predominnantly green obviously.   There were ladies with (hopefully false) huge ginger beards, a giant bear, Saint Patrick himself in his own version of the popemobile, shamrocks galore, and Irish flags everywhere.  A lot of the colour was provided by the dancers in their bright costumes.  There are several Irish dancing schools in the town, and I always like to imagine there being an intense rivalry along the lines of the ice cream wars between them.

All good fun, and a chance to take photographs of something other than cats for a change.

Saint Patrick leading the parade

This man might be Irish