Posts Tagged ‘Notting Hill’

Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll

Tuesday, March 5th, 2024

Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll – Class War’s peaceful pub crawl on Saturday 5th March 2016 had been widely advertised arousing considerable paranoia and a fairly large police presence with several businesses deciding to close for all or part of the day. Foxton’s even went so far as to get their offices boarded up, though it was unlikely they would have otherwise had suffered more than a few stickers on their windows.

Class War's Notting Hill Pub Stroll

Notting Hill has played an important part in Class War’s history. It was here, actually in Grenfell Tower, that some early issues of the Class War magazine were put together, and here on 27 August 1983 where the first Class War conference was held, here where Ian Bone in 1988 met Joe Strummer and his enthusiasm led to the ‘Rock Against the Rich’ tour.

Class War's Notting Hill Pub Stroll

You can view a short RoughlerTV video of Class War’s ‘Bash The Rich‘ protest on 3 November 2007 in Notting Hill and see my pictures of the event on My London Diary. Policing on that occasion was large and heavy-handed while in 2016 they largely remained in the background, at least until the group reached Foxtons.

Class War's Notting Hill Pub Stroll

I wrote at some length about the pub crawl in 2016, when some from Class War took a walk around some of the key sites in the area, led by Ian Bone, and you can still read Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll on My London Diary, as well as a shorter version with fewer pictures posted here on >Re:PHOTO a couple of years ago. I’ll use different pictures in this post and only give a brief outline of the event.

Class War's Notting Hill Pub Stroll

Some of us met at the start of the walk outside the Ground Floor Bar on the corner of Talbot Road and Portobello Road, where the first Class War conference took place in an upper room in what was then the Colville Hotel. Unfortunately this bar had closed down for good a few days after it had been advertised as the meeting point for the pub stroll, so we had to stand outside to listen to Ian Bone speaking about the event. It reopened some months later as a gin bar.

We crossed the Portobello Road to the next stop, formerly the Warwick Castle pub where ‘Rock Against The Rich‘ was conceived, no longer a proper pub in 2016 but a rather ghastly gastro-bistro, The Castle. It had decided to close for a few hours for “maintenance” and staff inside cast us apprehensive glances as we heard another speech and some adorned the windows with ‘blue plaques’ (blue paper plates) and Class War stickers.

H H Finch’s bar on the Portobello Rd had long closed but had been replaced by Young’s with a tourist pub in 1991. In 2016 it still also had the name Finch’s Dining Rooms on its frontage along with their new name. This venue had stayed open despite the Class War event though I think with some extra bouncers on the door, but we all walked in and enjoyed a few rather pricey beers, with a few others coming to join the group. I think all Class War had done here in the past was drink and talk and drink…

We walked down Portobello to the only remaining real pub on the street, the Earl of Lonsdale, formerly Henekeys. Its Victorian interior had been gutted in the 1960s but was restored after Sam Smiths took the pub over and changed its name.

The beer here was cheaper and better and it was hard to drag ourselves out and rejoin our route, but most of us managed to continue the stroll down to the house where George Orwell lived from 1927 to 1929. Ouside here Lisa McKenzie praised him for his recognition of the war by the elites against the working classes.

Next came Foxton’s boarded up for the occasion, where Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing spoke about the housing crisis and the role of estate agents in gentrification. After he had been speaking for a few minutes a large group of police vans and motorbikes arrived and Class War quickly disappeared into a local pub and the stroll finished.

You can read more about the history of Class War in Ian Bone’s highly entertaining book, Bash the Rich, still widely available.

And there is much more about the 2016 event at Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll.


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More Carnival – Children’s Day 2009

Wednesday, August 30th, 2023

More Carnival – Children’s Day: On Sunday 30th August 2009 I spent a few hours in Notting Hill and took a lot of pictures – here are just a few of those I liked. I can’t remember why I didn’t get around to putting them on line in 2009, but I only remembered them again in 2014 when August bank holiday was so wet I stayed home and didn’t go to carnival.

More Carnival - Children's Day 2009
Liquid Gold. I think it washed off me without too much difficulty
More Carnival - Children's Day 2009

I thought again this year about going to Notting Hill for Children’s Day when it is a little less crowded than the Monday. But there was engineering work on the railway with no trains from my station for over a week, only rail replacement buses.

More Carnival - Children's Day 2009

It would still have been possible to make the journey, or to take a bus and then the Underground, but having to do so on both the outward and homeward journey would add considerably to my journey times. I decided my trip to Notting Hill wasn’t essential.

More Carnival - Children's Day 2009

I’ve taken enough pictures of Carnival over the years since 1990 to satisfy me for my lifetime, and it’s hard to find anything really new.

Though I do regret having been put off from going to Notting Hill before 1990 by the media coverage which concentrated on the few violent incidents and painted a picture of street violence and mayhem. It’s really more of a huge outbreak of celebration.

There was a huge tightly packed crowd dancing to Sancho Panza

And I did photograph some children, though its clear my mind was largely on other things.

Many more pictures at Notting Hill – Children’s Day.


Notting Hill Carnival 2006

Monday, August 28th, 2023

Notting Hill Carnival 2006: On Monday 28th Aug 2006 I went to photograph Notting Hill Carnival, working with both black and white film and digital colour. In most of my carnival pictures I’ve concentrated on the people attending the event rather than the costumes and I did so on this occasion with the black and white, but for the colour I decided to mainly photograph those taking part in the carnival as the pictures here show.

Notting Hill Carnival 2006

Rather unusually my August 2006 page only starts on Friday 25th, when I went to Greenhithe & Swanscombe Marsh. I’d been away from London most of the month, holidaying with friends in Kent, visiting Paris and staying with family in Beeston and decided it wasn’t appropriate to post pictures from these locations on My London Diary.

Notting Hill Carnival 2006

In 2006 I went on both Sunday 17th, the Children’s Day and the main carnival event on the Monday, but the pictures here are all from the Monday. You can see those from Children’s Day on a link from the August Page of My London Diary.

Notting Hill Carnival 2006

I’ve always had a fairly elastic definition of London, and it stretched some way out along the River Thames both upstream and down, and also taking in the London Loop, a section of which I walked with family the following day.

Notting Hill Carnival 2006

Sunday had been a busy day too. Notting Hill only really gets going after lunch, so I had time to go to East Ham in the morning for the Sri Mahalakshmi Temple Chariot Festival and then call in at Bromley-by-Bow and walk to Stratford and photograph again the Bow Back Rivers before going to Children’s Day.

So I think I was probably fairly tired by the time Monday came around, having done rather a lot of cycling and walking over the past three days, as well as taking a great many pictures.

As I pointed out, it was “two years on from when I last photographed the event.” The previous year I had “tried to go, dragging myself to the station with a knee injury, but the pain was too much to continue. This year my knee held out, though I was glad to sink into a seat on the Underground at Latimer Road at the end of the day.

I also wrote “when I’ll get round to processing the film is anyone’s guess” and the answer was not for a very long time – and then I sent it away for processing rather than do it myself. By 2006 I had almost completely committed to digital for its many advantages and this was one of my final flings with film. The “more pictures soon” with which the piece ends was an aspiration never fulfilled online and I’ve yet to print any of the black and white pictures.

Perhaps the reason for this – and why I probably won’t get to Carnival this afternoon – is “because I’m getting older … I didn’t get the same buzz from this year’s event as in previous years, though most of the same things seemed to be around. perhaps there lies the problem; most of them did seem to be the same.”

But Notting Hill Carnival is still one of London’s great spectacles – and a great fashion show on the street. If you’ve never been it’s very much worth attending.

More pictures on My London Diary.



Capital Ring – South Kenton to Hendon

Sunday, August 27th, 2023

Capital Ring – South Kenton to Hendon: Monday 27th August 2018 was August Bank Holiday, which for many years meant if I was in London I was in Notting Hill for the carnival. But I think the last time I went was in 2012, when I went on Children’s Day and then wrote “either I’m getting too old for it, or perhaps carnival is changing, and this year I found it a little difficult. So I went on the Sunday, stayed around three hours and didn’t really want to return for the big day. So I didn’t.

Capital Ring - South Kenton to Hendon
Welsh Harp and West Hendon Waterside

Since then I’ve been out of London in several years and in the others I’ve thought about going to carnival again, but decided instead to go out for a family walk. And in 2018 with my wife we walked the section of the Capital Ring from South Kenton Station to Hendon Station.

Capital Ring - South Kenton to Hendon

The walk itself is only 6.2 miles, but walking to the station at the end and the kind of wanderings that all photographers indulge in it got a little longer. I’m not the kind of walker for whom a walk is a route march from A to B, but rather someone who likes to go where his eyes lead him in search of interesting views and places.

Capital Ring - South Kenton to Hendon

Unlike some sections of the Ring which are almost all woods, fields and trees this one has a wide range of different areas, all of some interest, beginning with South Kenton Station itself, the Windermere pub next door and the whole area of 1930s development.

Capital Ring - South Kenton to Hendon

I don’t think my two pictures of The Church of the Ascension really do this interesting 1957 building by J Harold Gibbons justice, but they do give some idea of how unusual it is.

We had the guide to the whole walk around London by Colin Saunders which saves having to carry maps and gives usually clear route descriptions as well as a few snippets of interesting information – such as the fact that this pond on the top of Barn Hill was a part of a huge landscaping project by Humphrey Repton, much of which was covered by housing in the 1920s and 30s and includes Wembley Stadium.

From here we were a little let down by the walk instructions and ended up wandering around a little lost in Fryent Country Park, but eventually with the help of the map and a little guesswork found the correct exit.

The walk continues through a number of suburban streets, not without some interest, eventually coming to Church Walk. Kingsbury does of course have some remarkable architecture but this lies some distance off the route. Fortunately I’ve photographed it on other occasions.

There are two St Andrew’s churches a short distance apart. The ‘new’ church is rather larger and was actually built around six miles away in Wells Street Marylebone in 1844-7 and moved here stone by stone in 1931-3. I haven’t posted a picture of this Grade II* building by S Daukes as it just seemed to me another Victorian gothic church. Probably I would have been more impressed had it been open and I could have seen the interior. A short distance away is the old St Andrew’s, a rather more quaint building with a Grade I listing, dating from the 12th-13th century though with some 19th century restorations.

St Andrews Old Churchyard, now left to nature as a ‘Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation‘ is also full of interest, with no less than five Grade II listed monuments and tombstones including this one for “Timothy Wetherilt (d.1741). Portland headstone with upper relief of cherubs amid rays, set between auricular scrolls below an upper cornice enriched with egg and dart mouldings.”

A short walk (with some deviation to a garden centre for its toilets) took us to the Welsh Harp – Brent Reservoir, built in 1835 to supply water for the Regents Canal which had opened in 1820. It got its name from a nearby pub and both pub and lake were for many years a popular leisure destination for Londoners. In 1948 the rowing events for the Olympics were held here, while for 2012 Eton College provided its Dorney Lake, completed in 2006 costing the college £17 million, though we paid through Olympic funding for the finish tower, a new bridge and an upgraded approach road and more.

At the east shore of the lake was Barnet Council’s West Hendon Estate, sold off to developers and now West Hendon Waterside. The pleasant and well-loved council estate with 680 homes in decent condition was sold for a quarter of its value to Barratt who describe it as “170 hectares of beautiful green surroundings overlooking the Welsh Harp reservoir” (see top picture.) Some of the council estate was still occupied, overshadowed by new towers with a crane looming over. The development will result in more homes, but few will be social housing, and the so-called affordable properties are beyond reach of the current residents, with many probably bought and left empty by overseas property investors.

We walked past what was an impressive 1930s cul-de-sac when I photographed it in 1993, but a little less so now as the distinctive metal windows with curved glazing on the bays have been replace by double glazing, though this must make the occupants rather more comfortable.

We walked on to Hendon, stopping for an ice-cream at Hendon Park Cafe, “the first kosher park café to open up in the UK” and admiring Hendon Park Holocaust Memorial Garden and the buildings arond Hendon’s Central Circus before catching a train on our way home.

More pictures on My London Diary at Capital Ring: South Kenton to Hendon.


Hastings Old Town Carnival – Hastings, Kent

Sunday, August 20th, 2023

Hastings Old Town Carnival: On Saturday 20th August 2005 I went to Hastings to photograph the carnival there. I’ve never really been that interested in carnivals like this, but several of my friends are and have carried out projects on the English Carnival.

Hastings Old Town Carnival

I think you can blame Tony Ray Jones for this, as before his tragically early death only 30 in 1972 he had photographed a number of them around the country in the late 1960s, with some of the pictures being amount the 120 images published in the posthumous book ‘A Day Off – An English Journal’ published in 1974.

Hastings Old Town Carnival

This volume was arguably the most influential English photographic book of the 1970s, with a copy on every youngish photographer’s bookshelf, including my own. You will be lucky to find a secondhand copy now for less than £100, although there are now much better printed and selected and more informative books on his work available, but all rather expensive. Probably the best is that produced for the 2004 show at the Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford, ‘Tony Ray-Jones’, by Russell Roberts. Digital scans then enabled rather better prints to be made from some of his negatives.

Hastings Old Town Carnival

The best way to see examples of his work on the web is to use Google’s image search and put in his name, Tony Ray Jones, which will turn up pictures from various web sites, as I don’t think there is any single site with more than a handful of examples of his work.

Hastings Old Town Carnival

Ray Jones is better known now, but for many years was a ‘photographers’ photographer’ and little known particularly outside the UK. In 2005 I gave a talk at the first FotoFestival in Bielsko-Biala in Poland in which I looked at his work along with that of another British photographer, Ray Moore. Sitting in the audience was the director of the Krakow Photomonth who told me afterwards that he hadn’t really known either of their work. In 2010 a show of the work of Tony Ray Jones was the major show of the main programme on British Photography. Though I was also offered a show in Krakow that never materialised.

I was influenced by both of those two British photographers, as well as others. And one of my major projects was sparked by a single image in A Day Off, of the London May Queen Festival. You can see the results in the preview of my Blurb book London May Queens – and there is a nice selection on Lensculture.


My own tastes in carnival were directed largely towards Notting Hill, which I photographed regularly for around 20 years. You can see some of my pictures from there as well as carnival pictures by of some of my friends on the web site from a show we put on at the Shoreditch Gallery in 2008. But the picture above was from Hastings.

The pictures here are all from my second visit to this carnival in Hastings on 20th August 2005, but there are also some from the previous year on My London Diary. I don’t think I’ve been back since.

More on this and another couple of other carnivals on the August 2005 page of My London Diary, with links to many more pictures.


Notting Hill Carnival 2004

Monday, August 29th, 2022

If you live in or near London there is a fairly good chance that you will be among the millions on the streets of Notting Hill today, although people sometimes come long distances for London’ and possibly Europe’s biggest festival. Many years ago I remember being a little surprised to see a poster advertising the event in St Denis on a visit to Paris, though post-Brexit it may be a little more difficult to travel here.

Although I’ve lived in the London area for most of the years carnival has been running, it was only around 1990 that I first went and experienced it. I’d probably been put off by the bad press it usually got, with the media making much of the crimes and battles with the police that occasionally took place.

But given the number of people attending and the relatively high level of policing the number of arrests at least in recent years is relatively low – and as a Huffington Post investigation into police figures shows, fairly similar to Glastonbury taking into account the number of people attending. In 2019 the number of arrests was dominated by those for drug offences, two thirds of the total, and relatively few for violent incidents, some of which were almost certainly simply reactions to heavy-handed policing. 23 years after the Macpherson report our police are still institutionally racist and certainly Cressida Dick did little to change that – we can only hope Sir Mark Rowley will do a better job, but my hopes are not high.

I’m not sure how many days I’ve spent at carnival over the years, but it is probably around 30, and I’ve yet to see any violence. Of course I’ve been offered drugs, though probably rather less frequently than in some other streets in London, and there was an almost omnipresent reek in any of the crouds announcing that what some were smoking wasn’t just tobacco. And although personally I kept to Red Stripe, I think by the end of some days I was experiencing something of a high from secondary inhalation.

I did one year encounter a rather incompetent pick-pocket. In 2004 I was standing still with some difficulty in a tightly packed crowd moving to the beat of a giant sound system and trying to take pictures when I suddenly became aware of a hand in my left trouser pocket. It wasn’t mine and I grabbed the wrist with both hands and slowly pulled it out to find it holding a wallet. But that wasn’t mine either and it was empty.

The main after-effect of carnival was always on my ears, which sometimes took several days to recover and for me to lose a ringing sound. In years when the bank holiday came of the 31st of August, this often meant I was back at work the following day, and it was difficult when I couldn’t hear properly. Sound at Notting Hill is phenomenal in places, with the ground and every organ inside your boddy vibrating, you feel it rather than hear it.

Of course there were some years I was away from London for various reasons – often because it wasn’t me who booked the holiday. In 2005 I was suffering badly from a knee injury but was still determined to go. I got ready and slowly limped my way to the station, where I had to climb a footbridge. A few steps up I collapsed in pain, pulled myself up and then came to my senses and realised I wasn’t going to be dancing on Ladbroke Grove that year, sat down and rested for a while before making my slow way home.

But I’ve not now been since 2012. I went on the Sunday, Children’s Day, stayed around three hours taking pictures and didn’t really want to return for the big day. So I didn’t. I’m not sure if its that I’ve changed – getting old – or if carnival has. But since then I’ve often been away from London but even when I’ve been here I’ve decided to go on a quiet country walk with family instead. So I don’t think I’ll be there today, but I might change my mind.

The pictures in this post were all taken in 2004, when I went on both Childrens Day which was the 29th August and the Carnival proper on the 30th, taking my son – then in his twenties – with me on Sunday. He didn’t want to go back the following day.


Chariot Festival, Olympic Site and Notting Hill

Saturday, August 27th, 2022

Chariot Festival, Olympic Site and Notting Hill

Chariot Festival, Olympic Site and Notting Hill. Sunday 27th August 2006, sixteen years ago was a busy day for me, travelling to East Ham to photograph a colourful Hindu festival, then on to Stratford for a short walk along the High Street and Bow Back Rivers, before taking the underground and ending up on Ladbroke Grove for the Children’s Day of the Notting Hill Carnival.

It was part of a very full few days for me, having got back to London after a couple of weeks in Paris and a few days with family in Beeston. Friday I’d put my folding bike on the train to Greenhithe and spent a day cycling around there and Swanscombe, Saturday I’d walked around 12 miles on the London Loop and after the events here on Monday I’d returned to Notting Hill for the carnival itself, after which I needed a few days rest. The text here is taken from My London Diary – with a few corrections, appropriate capitalisation and some additional comments. There are some more details in the captions on the picture pages of these events.


Sri Mahalakshmi Temple Chariot Festival – East Ham

Chariot Festival, Olympic Site and Notting Hill

Sunday morning found me in East Ham, where the Hindu Sri Mahalakshmi Temple was holding its chariot festival. It was a colourful and friendly event, but I soon felt I’d taken enough pictures and left.

It’s hard to show the flames when the offerings of food are made to the god, and difficult to catch the colour of the occasion.

more pictures


Lea Navigation and Bow Back Rivers – Stratford

On my way back from East Ham I stopped off at Bromley-by-Bow and walked up to Stratford High Street and along the rivers and channels there.

Parts were so thickly covered with bright green growth that they looked as if I could have walked along them.

There was another site demolished on the high street, with new housing starting to go up.

more pictures


Notting Hill Carnival – Childrens Day – Notting Hill

But the big event of August is always Notting Hill Carnival, and I was there both on the Sunday afternoon for Childrens’ Day and for the main event on the Monday, shooting both black and white film and colour digital.

[I noted back in 2006 that when I would get round to processing the black and white film is “anyone’s guess”. I think it was around ten years later that I finally admitted I wasn’t going to develop the chromogenic black and white films myself and the chemicals were probably past their best and I sent them for commercial processing. Though by then I wasn’t sure whether I had taken them in 2006 or 2007. But back to my 2006 post.]

Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older, but I didn’t get the same buzz from this year’s event as in previous years, though most of the same things seemed to be around.

Perhaps this was the problem; most of them did seem to be the same, two years on from when I last photographed the event. Last year, 2005, I tried to go, dragging myself to the station with a knee injury, but the pain was too much to continue. This year my knee held out, though I was glad to sink into a seat on the Underground at Latimer Road at the end of the day.

I didn’t take many colour pictures on Children’s Day, and most weren’t of children, and I think I probably didn’t stay long, but there are many more on the pages which follow on from there taken the following day.

more pictures


Class War Notting Hill Pub Stroll

Saturday, March 5th, 2022

Class War Notting Hill Pub Stroll. The peaceful pub crawl on Saturday 5th March 2016 by a small group of Class War supporters revisiting sites important in the early years of the movement attracted rather more police than participants; several venues closed for the event and Notting Hill Foxtons was fully boarded up.

The event had been widely publicised as ‘Historic – Riotous – Fun’ although it lived up to the first and last of these three words, it was never likely to be more than a little good humoured horseplay.

The event started with something of a whimper; unfortunately the Ground Floor Bar, formerly the Colville Hotel at 186 Portobello Road on the corner of Talbot Road which was the advertised starting point was unavailable as the whole pub had closed down shortly after the event was conceived and was boarded up awaiting sale. It did reopen briefly a few months later before becoming The Ginstitute.

Class War’s first conference was held in a private room at the Colville on 27th August 1983, shortly after the second Class War magazine had been published, and according to the speech Ian Bone made outside the closed pub it ended with a fight between Sean Mason and the landlord. In his entertaining memoir ‘Bash The Rich‘, still available, Bone writes “To be honest, I doubt if anyone who was there can really remember what the fuck happened” over the course of an 8 hour lock-in when even the landlord joined in the political arguments over “Stonehenge, IRA, sexual politics“, though he does give considerable detail.

Class War has been described as “fearless, hilarious and, for the rich and powerful of this benighted isle, absolutely terrifying” and this still appeared to be the case with their activities of a small handful of people in Notting Hill on this afternoon being closely watched and followed by a small team of police who appeared on every street corner. Class War found the second pub on the trail, ‘The Castle’ mysteriously ‘closed for maintenance’ as they arrived, though the staff were still working inside and it was open as usual later in the afternoon, with staff trying hard to scrape off an number of Class War stickers from its frontage.

The Castle was once Portobello Road’s the Warwick Castle, but it was sadly gutted some years back, gentrified and is now called simply ‘The Castle’. You can read about its heyday in the book by book ‘3000 Hangovers Later’ by Ray ‘Roughler’ Jones, another Class War stalwart who briefly joined the event later.

It was at the Warwick Castle that Ian Bone saw Joe Strummer of The Clash drinking, came up on the spot with the idea of a ‘Rock Against the Rich’ tour, and found the man to be enthusiastic for it – prepared not only to take part, but put money into it. Class War recorded the event by putting up a number of ‘Blue Plaques’ to Strummer and to Rock against the Rich – actually ‘Blue Plates’, paper plates fixed to the windows and walls with Class War stickers.

The Duke of Wellington had remained open, though perhaps with rather more bouncers than usual on the door, but they let us in and Class War settled down for a pint or two, with several more joining the group, including Lisa McKenzie who made a dramatic entry, throwing off her coat to reveal her ‘Class War Womens Death Brigade’ t-shirt. This used to be the main H H Finch’s bar on the Portobello Rd but was subjected to an entire refurbishment after being taken over by Young’s in 1991, now catering to the tourist trade.

Class War after a few expensive pints were led out again by Rita the Raven down Portobello Road where they danced briefly outside at the record stall before settling in the only remaining real pub in the area, the Earl of Lonsdale, a Sam Smith’s pub that was once Henekey’s. Sam Smith’s in many of their pubs have gone to a great deal of trouble to keep or recreate the character of a real British pub, and then their bitter was reasonably cheap (for London) as was the chips and other food.

Class War had published a route with timings for the afternoon but of course were running well behind. Despite this some supporters managed to find them and join in, though others I met at another event the following day had tried but failed. Most of us made it out of the pub to walk down to George Orwell’s former house – a venue that had gone viral with a faked image on social media showing a photoshopped CCTV camera next to its blue plaque. Here Lisa McKenzie gave a speech praising George Orwell, a scholarship boy at Eton, for recognising the nature of the war by the elites against the working classes.

Next came a visit to the Notting Hill branch of Foxton’s, securely boarded up for the day, outside which Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing spoke about the housing crisis and the role of estate agents in gentrification and the Foxtons sign gained a few stickers.

After he had been speaking for around ten minutes a number of police vans and motorcycles drew up noisily to reinforce the small group of officers who had been watching all afternoon from a polite distance of a few yards, and Class War quickly melted away into a nearby pub and I went with them.

An hour later, after the unexpected bonus of seeing a Class War make-up demonstration for a comrade it seemed unlikely that they would complete their tour with visits to the homes of Tory Chancellor George Osborne and his father and the Daily Mail, and I left for home.


Notting Hill Carnival 2006

Tuesday, August 31st, 2021

Children’s Day 2006

I’d missed Carnival in 2005 for the first year since 1990. I’d tried to get there despite a painful knee injury a few days earlier, but had had to abandon the journey; the quarter mile walk from home to railway station ending with me collapsing in pain and deciding it just wasn’t possible.

Children’s Day 2006

By 2006 I had a considerably improved camera, the Nikon D200, still DX APS-C format (Nikon were still adamant it was all you needed) but with a hugely improved viewfinder and 10.2Mp. And a rather wider range of lenses, though for carnival I only took the remarkably versatile Nikon 18-200mm zoom (equivalent to 27-300mm). Looking at the full-size images its hard to fault the lens quality, though it had more distortion than prime lenses, but this was of no consequence for these pictures.

Notting Hill Carnival 2006

The other big change was in processing software. Pixmantec had brought out its ‘Raw Shooter’ software and it was streets ahead of anything else. So good that Adobe had just bought out the company as it couldn’t face the competition. Even though this gave them the Pixmantec raw processing engine it was some years and several versions of Lightroom later that reached a similar level.

Notting Hill Carnival 2006

As in most years I went to Notting Hill on both the Sunday – Children’s Day – and the Bank Holiday Monday for the Carnival proper. I’d photographed the Sri Mahalakshmi Temple Chariot Festival earlier on Sunday, as well as taking a few pictures around Stratford, so I didn’t arrive until after 2pm on the first day, and for some reason I only put a few of the pictures on My London Diary. But there are rather more from Monday, and I’d decided to concentrate more on the actual procession than in most earlier years.

Notting Hill Carnival 2006
Notting Hill Carnival 2006

More pictures on My London Diary.


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.