Carnival time

RoY Kerridge

The best way to get to the Notting Hill Carnival is from the north. By crossing the bridge over the canal from Harrow Road and then crossing the railway bridge, Y? Can drop right into the middle of Car- both and see the floats and dancers before Before are swallowed up in the crowds. 'oefore crossing my bridges, however, I !flade a pre-Carnival foray to Chesterton's oeloved Hill of Notting and asked people What they thought of the festival. Nearly Carnival connected with the running of `arnival poured out a stream of anti-police F°IliPlaints and stories, until I gained the in1Pression that the Carnival would be a vast, violent anti-police demonstration, with incidental music. Mere residents, without an Arts Council grant to their name, hoped it would be a happy occasion. 6;1" StoPPed three neat, well-spoken igreo, who told me that Carnival was 'a 800d celebration, but some people feel they want to carnival and some don't.' u Just as I was thinking how well-brought- fP lurched were a frightful mother in a mangy h

me Lurched up, her pinched face reminding '"e of the streetwalkers of Liverpool.

'Haven't I told you not to talk to strange Men?' she bawled, hustling them away from ;r1„e. 'Look at him! I ask you, does he look like a journalist?' Feeling rather flattered, I went on my Way.

Frenchman me five pounds, m'sieu,' a young demanded. He sat on a wall i!ocler the Westway flyover, amid heaps of itter already dropped to give a Carnival astrhoshere.

'What for?'

Tel buy myself a meal.' Lgooring him, I pressed on to All Saints c4d, a drug-dealing centre and also a base it-ir grant-seeking Carnival profiteers. Here was offered hashish, and tried in vain to Persuade the jovial Rastafarian peddler to quid his story to the Spectator. I had a few 1;114 °n roe, and I don't smoke hashish, but e politely refused to make a deal. life disturbing feature of my present-day Fer i8 the way Spectator writers have of 11'n-sing to be confined to their proper col- _Inns. Instead they insist on bursting into mY articles. No sooner had I been rebuffed

by the Rasta than I met Jaspistos, the popular competition-setter, who evidently lived in the heart of Rasta-land. Back at his flat, over an omelette, he regaled me with stories of his life in Jamaica as a local celebrity — the only white navvy on the island. Humming the work songs he had taught me, I walked home and waited for Carnival.

Sunday, the first day of Carnival, is sup- posed to be Children's Day. Once the visitors, by sheer numbers, had cancelled out the disagreeable anti-white and anti- social stewards and sound system engineers, the day seemed to go fairly well. My impres- sions were of shuttered shops, friendly policemen and cries of 'Mango! Come and get your mangos!' Vendors were everywhere, and tins of lager proved a popular line, sometimes balanced one on top of the other on a young man's head. A troupe of children wearing purple sombreros with the crowns cut away and waving Oriental flags paraded by. Probably they all belonged to the same youth club. Mothers with toddlers in pushchairs walked relaxedly down from Kensal Rise, looked at the outskirts of Car- nival for a while, and then returned home. Few West Indians live in Notting Hill nowadays, but many go back for the day to relive past glories, just as Africans returned to Cable Street for a long time after their houses there had been pulled down.

Returning at 11 o'clock at night, I found Ladbroke Grove alive with young people, a long line of West Indians performing a conga-shuffle dance behind a van with recorded music blaring away. Many of them had whistles hanging round their necks, with a shriek that could pierce an ear at ten paces. The metallic clang of lager tins being kicked along vied with the clash of steel pans and the bopping of bongo drums. 1 was reminded of Sandy Row in Belfast on the night before the Orange Parade — the same vendors, the same mess and the same hilarity that at any moment could change to something else. Happily, at Carnival, the devil's moment never came. Carnival is a time of amnesty, when shebeens, speakeasies and drinking dens throw their doors open unashamed to the world. In All Saints Road and the streets around, every corner seemed to have an open doorway full of young men drinking lager and jigging up and down. In one of these places I was mistaken for a policeman, but nobody seemed to mind. Earlier on, I had seen a stout man in a pork pie hat and a moustache, a broad smile on his face, shake a policeman's hand and de- mand, 'Who was the greatest man till I came along?' Jesus Christ,' the copper answered at once.

Midnight in All Saints Road saw a line of police, the officers looking rather tense, pushing their way through the crowds. No one was arrested. White youngsters, mostly girls, seemed deliriously happy to be there, as this road has attracted some notoriety of late, Notting Hill's proposed equivalent of Brixtons's 'Front Line'. Carnival is Open Day for All Saints Road, and romantic snobs could play at being 'the only white person accepted in the ghetto'. I waltzed into the Mangrove Restaurant, at various times the haunt of Michael 'X', author Colin Maclnnes and Darcus Howe, the Marxist intellectual. A grim-faced bouncer waltzed me right out again, but I re-entered the red-lit club by another door, looked at the dancers for a moment and left. Mini- bus-loads of police waited in the cobbled alleys, but the evening of Children's Day passed off without any trouble.

Bank Holiday Monday dawned, not bright and fair, but a trifle foggily. However, the sun was shining by the time I reached the top of Golborne Road. It shone on some of the finest costumes I had yet seen, those of the Tribes of Africa, and a little further on, of the Forgotten Tribes, Incas, Mayas and Aztecs. Brilliant colours, huge head-dresses, sewn-on mirrors and waving spears made a colourful display. My eyes feasted on the rich greens and purples and the towering helmets of horns, plumes and antennae. `Glissando', a steel band, stretched itself along two floats, the red and white-clad performers beneath a blue canopy reminding me of a coach outing of Father Christmases. Then, in Portobello Road, I rediscovered one of the reasons why I look somewhat askance at the Not- ting Hill Carnival.

Fond of walking rapidly from one place to another, I was annoyed to find that the crowds were now so great that I could not move a step without the consent of mindless thousands surging hither and yon without knowing why. Pressed into the human tide, I was pulled along with them to places where there was nothing to see. The visitors seemed determined to see every street in Notting Hill where nothing was happening, and at the next corner, when a fresh wave of Time Out-y sophisto-punks joined the throng, I thought for a moment that I would be trampled to death. Much was made of the 'multiracial' aspect of Car- nival, but the sensation-seeking features of the fashionable white youngsters did nothing to enhance my day. Nor do I care for the political side of Carnival, where pure pleasure and hedonism is somehnvit linked with the cause of Revolution. All told, however, this Carnival was better thaP its predecessors, thanks to the Trinidadian element.

Notting Hill's Carnival has no direct COw nection with Trinidad, New Orleans or Brazil, but owes its existence to council-rub community centres. Now, I noticed, 'Trip)' dadians had surfaced, taking over the Car nival and making an artificial occasion into something real. After 20 years in the doldrums, Trinidadian music, steelbanat calypsos and 'soca' dance music, had eclipsed militant Jamaican reggae, once the hallmark of Carnival. Reggae itself 19,.5 changed for the better, into the 'rub a dub dub stylee' of Yellowman, whose devotees make up their own rhymes about everyday life. Carnival is improving in spite of the grants and the arts workshops, 0°', because of them. Those in authority, the grant-getters, are the Trotskyites, Thatcherites and anti-police fanatics. The free spirits who improve Carnival out 01 their own pockets create beauty and bar, piness and couldn't care less about racial politics. Breaking free from the human traffic jam at last, I hurried down to Ladbroke Grove, passing a stall belonging to Jah Bones, the well-known Rasta. A young man I had las', seen crouching in the corner of a Rasta cornmune in Tottenhman, ferociously tak- ing notes on everything I said to Mr Bones, his master, now looked at me without recognition. I bought a paper from this stall with a poem in it beginning, 'Chant Rastaman Chant!/Chant seh I and I love gania plant'. At the main road, a calypso singer perch- ed on top of a lorry sang into a micro phone: `Feeling hot, hot, hot!', the Car- nival's theme song. Nearby, Emmanuel C. lgwegbe from Nigeria painted a picture of Carnival as it happened, adding floats in Poster colour as fast as they rolled along. I was very impressed. The further I strayed from the carnival centre the better I felt, free from the pressing crowds and the over- whelming noise. A front door opened and a filliantlY dressed troop of Roman soldiers -merged, scarlet with silver breast-plates. Most of them were small children, who had helped to make their own costumes under Tri of Mr Percy Frederick from nidad, a family friend. 'There are my standard bearers,' he told me Proudly. On the next corner, I met a larger gather- ing of Trinidadians dancing in the road. A middle-aged man inl a stripy suit and trilby hat embraced his friends, who were dressed in gaudy costumes, Elizabethan Arabs with Masks on. Their womenfolk sat in a row on the , Pavement looking on. I greatly warmed "13 this crowd, who reminded me, with their Jokes and homely wisdom, of my church- Suing Jamaican and Barbadian friends, most of whom regard Carnival as sinful. 1, • Trinidad was once a Roman Catholic Isand, and the evangelical idea of 'saved' and 'unsaved' does not apply there as strongly • as in Jamaica. Unlike many 'secular' West Indians, this group seemed unaffected by modern fashions, greeted me °Peo-heartedly and tried in vain to induce me to dance. ,l wondered if the costumes were Fulani- Influenced, as members of this Arab-like tribe were sometimes sold to the West In- dies in slavery days. One woman's head- dress was of more recent origin, as it was a genuine policeman's helmet. bid You sneak up behind a policeman and steal his helmet?' I asked, half- admiringly. did not!' she replied emphatically. 'We sveaPPed. He's over there, down the road, wearing my own hat. Come, I'll show you.' Sure enough, there was a tall, friendly POliceman, surrounded by Trinidadian ad- nhrirers and wearing a lady's wide-brimmedNat `I was a village policeman at Blyth in ottinghamshire, but I applied to be transferred to Notting Hill,' he told me, i cir3king on his new friends with affection.

see!' I announced, producing my .00tebook. 'Police spokesman claims that 'pies' red straw hats will he worn in the force this year.' 'That's right, and policemen's helmets are the latest Selfridges' style for women,'

he replied, )-,

_ Everybody laughed,' 'and I was glad I had come to the Carnival.