Carnival-loving grandma gets eyeful at road march

For 91-year-old Pearl McLarren, watching the revellers jam in the road to the sounds of soca while wearing colourful ensembles, has always been one of her favourite pastimes.

Last Sunday, after a 10-year hiatus, the senior, affectionately known as 'Miss Pearl', returned to the carnival scene and was shocked to see that the crowds have got bigger and the costumes smaller.

"I wasn't expecting to see what I saw," said Miss Pearl, who went to watch the road march after attending church.

"If the gentleman who take me to church didn't say it was carnival, I wouldn't have been. I would've come straight home. But it was when he said that, and I hadn't seen it for years, so I said I'll come," she told THE WEEKEND STAR.

Sporting her now famous blue hair, Miss Pearl, accompanied by her great-granddaughter, L'Jai Perry, sat in her wheelchair under a tree on Trafalgar Road in stunned silence as she watched the girls sauntering by in their wire bras, thongs and feathers. She told THE WEEKEND STAR that initially, she thought a few of them were just risk-takers, but quickly figured that near-nudity was the order of the day.

GOOD LAUGH

"When I look, I say, 'but dem girls, them naked.' I've never seen such in my life. Is when I see them start come, big one, likkle one. My God! When I see them start coming down, I realise they were specially made. Whole body, leg, everywhere. Big bottom, likkle one, and they were all there. I had a good laugh. I say, I never know people could be on the street like this," she said.

Miss Pearl said that while the costumes she remembers were never modest, the ones she saw on Sunday surpassed her expectations. Never one to judge the 'young generation', as she referred to the revellers, she recalled how her grandmother used to chastise her for what she considered revealing clothes.

"When we were young, my grandmother would say, 'You don't wear any knickers. You nuh have on any underskirt.' We used to dress up in the miniskirt and the shorts, and they always wear long bloomers and slip. They say we [are] going out there without clothes or we going get pneumonia. But we used laugh, so I say she would've liked to see them now," she said.

"Life goes on, everything moves on, and we just have to move with the time and make the young people enjoy themselves, if that's the way they want to do it. We can't go condemn them 'cause they wasn't out there stark naked," she said.

Though it is unlikely Miss Pearl will ever be more than a carnival spectator, she says she is looking forward to seeing the revellers again.

"I can watch more if my life spare, probably it might even be better," she said.