The big parade in Santa Cruz which is scheduled for Tuesday 16th February is the Carnaval event, the one that all the tourists are here in Tenerife to see; the one ’second only to Rio’. But it is far from the only Carnaval event.

Every town in Tenerife has its own Carnaval with the one in Los Cristianos which runs from 5th to 14th of March and has a Viva Mexico theme this year being the last.

Even though the Arona Carnaval is not until next month, schools are out next week and so those schools which wish to do so will be having their Kids’ Parade tomorrow.

For whatever reasons my kids’ school was a bit of a wet blanket last year with none of the outings and fun stuff the kids had got to do in the previous years. There was no Carnaval Parade, no Canarian Day celebration nor big organised march through the streets to meet the Three Kings and have a picnic in the street.

All their excursions were curtailed too. No visit to the bomberos or to the airport or day spent at the Quimpi farm or environmentally-minded expedition up the side of the Red Mountain.

Although you might think the overall recession was behind the moratorium on fun outings I have a suspicion it was more to do with the teachers lobbying for better pay and jibing at the extra duties required of them in organising and sheperding these missions when they are not paid enough for their daily grind as it is.

Anyway this year somebody put the Ooooh! back in school and we are having a Carnaval Parade. Yaaay! The kids are all aquiver and very much looking forward to their special day tomorrow.

The following information should therefore be of interest to you whether you like kids and want to watch them all march past in their Carnaval disguises or whether you loathe the little monsters and want to stay the hell out of Dodge.

If you are in the Las Galletas neighbourhood tomorrow, the kids will emerge blinking into the sunlight at approximately 12.30. Some kids will be blinking more than others, especially my son who for some mysterious reason is being dressed by his teacher as a traffic light.

My daughter and her classmates will be dressed as natives of La Palma complete with white frocks (at least the girls will be in frocks) and big floppy dress hat.  This year the school chose the outfits and ordered them from El Kilo. Saved a lot of messing about of course but in typical Tenerife fashion we only just got the blouse and skirt home now (2.p.m. on Thursday the day before the big event) to fix or fiddle with if it is too big or small.

As is traditional, all the parents will be there, stepping on each others toes and jostling for position to get the best shots of their babies. It is all in good fun but if you should be there and happen to get a belt in the ribs, well, I apologise in advacne but you really should know better than to get between a mum and her dookied-up darlings.

In recent years, the last day before the schools knock off for the Carnaval holiday has been a huge event for the whole town. All the kids in school get dressed up, as do all the teachers and a hefty percentage of the parents and there has been a colourful (if shambolic) parade round the streets.

If anything hints at the effect of the current recession on the community it is the curtailing of this event on a local level (as well as the abandonment of all school excursions). This year only the infants get to dress up and there is to be no parade. Even so, the costumes the little ones wear are fabulous. Whether home made or store bought they are all wonderful and a far cry from the cobbled together fancy dress cossies of my day.

In days gone by,
When I was five,
And dressed up for celebration,
The trick back then was coloured pen,
and huge imagination.

This year the theme of the Las Palmas Carnaval is Pirates while horror movies are the focus of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnaval (that is a link to the official website for Carnaval 2009, though honestly I wouldn’t waste my time. You’d be better of popping over to Secret Tenerife where writer Pamela Heywood is doing a far better job of providing info about the event than the touruist board. Shame on them, really…

Anyway, it was no surprise to see quite a few scary skeletons and quite a few pirates. There may even have been a scary skeletal pirate though I admit that one did not catch my eye.

As always, Spiderman was hugely popular and there were more Disney princesses than you could shake a broomstick at. Minnie Mouse was popular this year while a brilliant Ninja costume was a new one on me and on Sami who found it most annoying that he couldn’t tell if the Ninja was really his friend, Noel.

As reported in Secret Tenerife, today is the day for the Gala de Elección of the Carnaval Queen for 2009 and therefore the official launch of Carnaval 2009. You can watch the ceremony and the hopeful entrants in all their spectacular glory live on RTVC t.v. or internet from 9.30.