Notting Hill Carnival

It’s the 50th year of London’s Notting Hill Carnival, a Caribbean-themed street party held during August Bank Holiday each summer.   Echoing the British fairs of the 18th century and adopting their symbolic ‘moments of great festivity and release’, the Carnival celebrates music, dance, jerk chicken and Red Stripe Beer.

Or, more historically, “juggling, pickpocketing, whoring, drinking, masquerade — people dressed up as the Archbishop and indulging in vulgar acts’.
Quite so, as illustrated.  We wouldn’t miss it, if only for that possibility.

Sunday, however, is Family Day, the slightly more relaxed version than anything-goes-Carnival-Monday.  The crowds were already thick by the time we emerged from the Bayswater tube station and pressed through to the heart of the festival. 
We quickly found our place, though. Sharing a hollow pineapple filled with Pina Colada is a sentimental favorite (although it has to come from the thatched stand at Westbourne and Leadbury to be Official).  It was a good year for the jerk chicken, red beans and rice in peanut sauce, beer and curry goat, sampled at food stands up and down the side streets.

  

The music was…loud: ‘lots of beat and minimal melodies.  No matter, the trailing dancers, dressed in locally themed shirts, jumped and danced and loved it.  The smell of weed was everywhere (moreso than ever present in the Netherlands) and the ground was littered with nitrous oxide canisters (later covered by drifts of general trash from the food stands).
The crowds were great, though: lots of folks enjoying the sunny day, the colourful costumes, and the pulsing rhythms.

   

There was a really heavy police presence to keep things settled (but mostly kept busy giving directions to lost tourists). Like Oktoberfest, I suspect that things degenerate as the day wears on, and we wandered off site around six while the vibe was still lovely.

“Carnival allowed people to dramatise their grievances against the authorities on the street...it allowed people a space to free-up but risked being was banned for moral reasons and for the antiauthoritarian behaviour that went on like stoning of constables,” notes one observer. 
From the Guardian’s descriptions, not much has changed today.

Still, t’was great fun to wander while we were there.

Once along Little Venice

This turns out to have been my week for walking the Canals.

I normally zip through Paddington Station on the way elsewhere, diving into the Tube or jumping onto the Great Western Railway out of the city.  Today, though, I found a couple of hours hanging about before linking up with my w.wezen and heading to Carnival.  Google Maps suggested several nearby galleries (all closed) and a couple of pubs (not for breakfast).  A coffee and a sit in the sun with a book sounded like better use of a Sunday morning, so I slipped out the back on Paddington onto the Grand Union Canal.

2,000 miles of working canals and rivers still criss-cross the British countryside.  They are owned by the Canal and River Trust, restored by the Waterway Recovery Group, and advocated by the Inland Waterway Association.  Many date back to the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, when wealthy landowners  and merchants would dig canals to move agricultural and mineral products to shipping and trading centers.  At it’s peak, the network embraced nearly 5000 miles of waterways, supported by associated locks, towpaths, aqueducts, and tunnels.

  

The Grand Union Canal and the Regent’s Canal meet behind Paddington Station, a concrete-lined trench winding beneath viaducts and footbridges.  Markedly better than I’ve described, the area was named Little Venice by poet Robert Browning, and is one of the more gentrified sections of London.  On a sunny morning, with only scattered bicyclists and joggers, canal boats at placid dock, and strolling couples taking photos of one another, it’s surprisingly peaceful and colourful.

  

A misty rain alternated with warm August sunlight, a few working boats chugging past.  One boat owner hosed off his rear deck, another set out tables and raised umbrellas for hoped-for patrons, a third shared breads and coffee with friends laughing quietly.  I never did stop myself, there always seemed to b e better pictures a bit further along, following thoughts from the week upstream.