As the Car­ni­val week­end be­gins, some as­pects of the cel­e­bra­tions are al­ready over, and this year's cel­e­bra­tions are al­ready tak­ing on a dif­fer­ent shape.Last year, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), the statu­to­ry body set up to over­see Car­ni­val, de­cid­ed to re­move some of the el­e­ments of the Di­manche Gras show. Thus last night saw the fi­nals of the Kings and Queens of Car­ni­val, and the Ca­lyp­so Monarch was se­lect­ed even be­fore then, on Thurs­day night.

Al­though in some quar­ters these de­par­tures from tra­di­tion were greet­ed with dis­may, the con­cerns about them were ad­dressed in time and the shows went on as planned.The changes were in­tro­duced with the aim of mak­ing some of the Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions more pa­tron-friend­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able.

The Ca­lyp­so Monarch show on Thurs­day night was thus a bad omen for oth­er events, since it last­ed just as long as Di­manche Gras shows of old–one of the ar­gu­ments used for sep­a­rat­ing the events in the first place. There were too many guest per­form­ers, long pe­ri­ods of in­ac­tiv­i­ty, an in­ter­mis­sion, and ca­lyp­so­ni­ans al­so took a long time to set up and per­form. All this made it a very long night for the fans, with the show end­ing at 2 am–for those with the en­durance.

It is to be hoped that the Di­manche Gras show, hav­ing had the com­pet­i­tive as­pects re­moved, will not be stuffed to equal­ly un­wieldy pro­por­tions, but will be a stream­lined and so­phis­ti­cat­ed pro­duc­tion that can be en­joyed by both the au­di­ence at the Grand Stand and those watch­ing on tele­vi­sion.

More is not al­ways bet­ter–a sim­ple les­son that too many lo­cal pro­duc­ers have dif­fi­cul­ty in grasp­ing. And to sep­a­rate out the Di­manche Gras com­pe­ti­tions, and then re­place one show with three events each as long as the orig­i­nal Sun­day-night marathon, would be a ma­jor er­ror of judg­ment.

New NCC boss Al­li­son De­mas may have been con­strained be­cause she was thrust in­to the post long af­ter plans were for­malised by the pre­vi­ous ex­ec­u­tive, and had many wran­glings to sort out when she ar­rived.Once the dust dies down on Ash Wednes­day, no doubt she will start plan­ning for next year's events, first of all with a thor­ough and in-depth post mortem of what worked and what did not for Car­ni­val 2013.

As to­day's kid­dies' pa­rade of the bands starts the ball rolling for a busy week­end of fes­tiv­i­ties, with the Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion lat­er and street rev­el­ry to come, all those in­volved–those par­tic­i­pat­ing, those watch­ing and the se­cu­ri­ty forces–should do every­thing in their pow­er to en­sure that the Car­ni­val sea­son is trou­ble-free.

There is usu­al­ly a wel­come lull in vi­o­lent crime over the Car­ni­val days–but un­for­tu­nate­ly oth­er kinds of law­less­ness flour­ish, many of them car­ried out by cit­i­zens who would not nor­mal­ly dream of break­ing the law.Un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol or in the name of fun, mas­quer­aders and oth­er cel­e­brants feel en­ti­tled to car­ry out small acts that demon­strate a lack of re­spect and con­sid­er­a­tion for oth­ers, such as lit­ter­ing, uri­nat­ing in pub­lic or de­fac­ing peo­ple's prop­er­ty.

All of these can be a ma­jor in­con­ve­nience to those on the re­ceiv­ing end–but none is nec­es­sary for the en­joy­ment of Car­ni­val.