Canvey carnival has been kept in the family, started by Ted Andrews 74 years ago and continued by daughter Mary Dallas. JANE O'CONNELL

talks to Mary about the future

Carnival queens may have come and gone on Canvey over the past 75 years, but there is only one true ruler of the event - Mary Dallas.

For the past 40 years Mary, now 77, has reigned supreme over the annual event. You could say she was born to it, seeing as how her father Ted Andrews had run it for 32 years before her.

But not for much longer, it seems. Because Mary and the carnival committee (including her daughter Susan, 32, next in line if you like), have decided enough is enough.

Next year, the 75th anniversary of its inception, will be the carnival's last.

The reason? Public apathy, rising costs, and what Mary claims is a lack of support for the event from the police and the Castle Point Council. She is so incensed that she is to write to the Chief Constable to complain about the treatment she feels she has received.

"At the end of the day, the police don't want to know," says this weary matriarch, settling herself back on a cushion. "They're not at all like the old police who used to enjoy a carnival. They told me it wasn't big enough and they didn't have the time for it."

At the 11th hour this year, with the agreement of the council, the carnival committee was granted a permit.

But Mary claims it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, because police opened up the other side of the road during the procession up Furtherwick Road. "It was chaotic, with abuse coming from other drivers," she fumed.

This has been disputed by Sgt Simon Werrett from Canvey police, who said that the road was closed but admitted bottlenecks were caused from feeder roads once the procession passed and the roads were opened once more.

If Mary is bitter, it's understandable. She can, after all, remember the glory days of the carnival, when there were 70 floats in a procession. This year there were just six.

Like many old islanders, Mary is also passionately attached to Canvey. She has lived there since she was five and is of the generation who remembers a time when no-one locked their doors, and when the only way off the island was waiting for a boat to come in - or wading across the creek at low tide.

She's stayed put ever since, with the exception of two years in her husband's home town of Portsmouth when their two eldest children were small, but found the town unfriendly.

"I was so used to being able to call on others. I couldn't understand how people down there could just watch me struggle onto a bus with two pushchairs and two young children and not help," she recalls.

The carnival was started in 1925 but her father, Ted Andrews, who ran a fairground, took it over two years later. Plans to build a cottage hospital for the island, using carnival funds, fell through after Essex County Council bought land designated for the building.

Even more than half a century on, Mary is still indignant. "People put their hands into their pockets and paid sixpence a head towards the carnival. We should have got that money," she said.

The fairground itself was very much a family business. Mary attended Miss Kipps private school on the island, yet from the age of seven would work every afternoon in the summer on the rides. In the winter, she would help paint and restore the fairground equipment.

With the advent of the war, the fair was held only on an annual basis during the carnival . . . and never really recovered once peace came.

"People started to go on foreign holidays and habits changed," Mary recalls.

"I can remember a time when people used to live in tents in their gardens in the summer so they could rent out their house to holidaymakers for the summer. Life was a walking pace then - now it's running."

The war meant Mary went to work making components for Marconi in Chelmsford. It also brought romance when she met Percival Dallas, from Portsmouth.

The couple married when Mary was 20, and they lived on Canvey before the unsuccessful stint in Portsmouth.

Percival, who died seven years ago, seems to have accepted Mary's clannish devotion to the island, the carnival and to the fairground.

"He fitted in rather well," Mary nods approvingly.

As well as Yvonne, now 52, and Brian, 50, the couple had two more children, Eric, now 40, and Susan. Carnival and its planning was very much part of all the children's lives. Susan was plonked on a float aged three and was hooked.

She has followed in her mother's footsteps on another front - both women own florist shops on the island.

Mary began hers, Suzanne's Florist, in 1975. "I'd started flower arranging and a woman on the course said she'd work for me if I could get it started," she recalls. "I had £75, so I did."

Even today, at an age where many women are on their second decade of retirement, Mary has no plans to put her feet up. "What would I do with myself?" she asks, shrugging.

Despite the shop, it's clearly the carnival which is her first love.

Carnival volunteers have come and gone, but it's always Mary and a small band who stay at the helm. " So will next year really be the last? Mary pauses. "We will see," she says.

Somehow you feel the show's not over yet.

Pondering her future - Mary Dallas

Picture: ROBIN WOOSEY

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.