Events
Notting Hill Carnival - Brought to you by James Wormald -
Today (5th September) is my 3-year anniversary living in London. It’s 3 years to the day I first came down to this fair city from up North, with nothing but the shirt on my back, and a couple more shirts in a bag… also on my back. I still remember it well. I could spend days walking around the city in the sunshine, everything still new and fresh, glistening in a lovely tint of rose. Sadly, it was just a few days after the Notting Hill Carnival. My only previous experience of the West London event was as a young child. I recall spending time during a mini-trip South, on the tube from one place to another, travelling through the underground area. Even those scenes, however dulled and toned down from those above the surface, were something to behold, not least for someone of my Northern gloom.
How then, I can now enquire, had by the end of my first year, my enthusiasm for the sunshine-fuelled experience died such a sad and untimely death? This question I can not answer. Happily, I no longer need to answer, only to right it. And so, for the 2009 Carnival’s Monday (after a Saturday and Sunday of not even realising it was on) I head out to enjoy all it has to offer. The review? Good. Great! But am I being too generous? Am I being too kind to an event which was mostly, if it’s thought about, the weather?
I did have a great time. I spent a good 4 or 5 hours, walking around the whole of West London, getting lost in the part-time pedestrianised streets. In fact by the end, I had such little idea where I was or in which direction I was heading that it took me an hour and a half just to find a bus, any bus. Without a care which one, and only the assumption it would at some point head to a tube station. This is what comes from clearing your schedule and leaving the day to whatever ends up happening.
The event is incredibly simple (at least Monday’s events are). There’s a parade running in a more or less square of cordoned off streets. Parading this route, are vans with music systems, DJs shouting at everyone, instructing them to have a good time, and walls of speakers turned up to 11. In between these ‘floats’ are groups of dancing people, dressed in various colourful and featherful costumes, dancing along to the aforementioned music. Additionally mixed into the dancing groups like poorly chosen seasoning, are official photographers, most of whom looking so stressed, they plan on dropkicking the next idiot dancing into and ruining their shot, and groups of stewards who by the looks on their faces had picked the job out of a community service lucky dip whilst everyone else went to work as roller coaster and ice cream testers for the day.
You get the occasional person dancing in the group with a genuine smile on their face, perhaps flying a flag or shaking something with miniature tambourine symbols, but I was quite shocked at just how miserable everyone seemed. Thankfully the crowds were much more lively, some dancing themselves, most just standing there, but smiling and enjoying themselves at least.
I think the reason the Notting Hill Carnival is so celebrated as a great event, is that it’s a carnival, traditionally a time for colour, for sun, for drinking, dancing, smiling, and having a good time, in a city like London. Where presenting a smile to a stranger would involve a fair amount of risk and should not be attempted without the proper use of a knife-proof jacket. It’s a time when everyone’s pre-deposed melancholy is unwittingly replaced with gaiety for just a few days. This is why it’s so, if not enjoyable, just weird to be around.
You must go to the Notting Hill Carnival. You must drink. You must dance. You must be happy. Why? Because you must not miss out. I can’t help but think the majority of revellers go, stand around, watch other people pretend to have a good time, eat some barbecue food, drink a warm can of lager on the street, and tell themselves this is great, this is how life should be, and that this is what freedom is. Then go home, and lie about how great a time they had. And it works!
It was fabulous!