Day 26 - Notting Hill Carnival

I was up in time this morning to accompany Janelle and Bob on their morning walk around Wandsworth Common. After breakfast it was time to plan the day’s activities. Once I learned that today, a public holiday here, happened to be the day of the annual Notting Hill Carnival it seemed to good an opportunity to miss. (For those who don’t know, the Notting Hill Carnival a celebration of West Indian culture, with a big street parade, colourful costumes and loud reggae music). True, there was due to be a heavy police presence due to the recent riots, but there seemed to no real reason to expect any trouble.

I walked to Clapham South and caught the tube to Embankment where I transferred to the Circle Line for Notting Hill Gate. Except that at High Street Kensington, one stop early, they announced the termination of the service due to an unspecified “engineering emergency” at Notting Hill Gate. Which just meant that I was able to get a bit more exercise before reaching the area of the carnival. Entering the carnival area there were people handing our little maps of the area where the carnival events were to be staged. By following the loud music I found one group of parade participants finalising their elaborate costumes. Many of them involved wearing enormous head pieces or wing like extensions of one type or another.

I gathered that some street procession was supposed to be happening, but as I followed the first group to make a start it soon became a long list of procession participants more or less stationary as the crowd filed passed to look at them. Thus I worked my way along the “procession” (well, I and a few thousand other people) taking probably far too many photos of the people dressed up in various costumes. Somewhere in the process I also sampled some of the West Indian fare on offer, namely the Jerk Chicken. Which actually tasted better than its name might otherwise lead you to believe. The fried dumplings and banana fritters sounded far more conventional but still tasted nice.

So about three hours and over 350 photos later, with weary legs and darkening clouds having replaced the blue sky, and with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts nowhere to be seen, I decided to call it a day and head back to base. With all of the nearby tube stations now closed until 6:00pm as part of the crowd control measures, I opted to walk to Shepherds Bush where I was able to catch an Overground train (formally known as British Rail) five stops to Wandsworth Common – which is even closer to Janelle & Chris’s house than the tube station I walked to this morning – so I able to put my feet up by 4:00pm.

A quiet late afternoon and evening ensued, chatting to Chris and Janelle, and seeing their daughter Katie briefly when she dropped by on her way home from a long weekend away.