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.
Liquid Gold. I think it washed off me without too much difficulty
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.
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.
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.
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.
