30
Aug
2016
By Calvin at 12:26 GMT, 7 years ago
My wife has lived in London for almost as long as I have and she recently remarked that in spite of visiting the vast majority of places and events around the city the one thing she had never experienced was the Notting Hill Carnival. With my experience of policing the event I could have put her off the idea of attending, but then that would have been unfair as my experience was clearly blinkered as I had only been there to do a job. So, we made the decision to go with a couple of friends of ours.
We took the train to Notting Hill Gate and at 11:20 am we were walking up Kensington Park Road to the junction with Westbourne Grove where we joined the first crowded place. In the distance to the east we could see the first of what we expected to be many carnival floats making its way along the street, so we hung around to watch it go by. Clearly things were not going to plan as only one float came past us and we later learned that there had indeed been a hold-up due to a fire somewhere on or near the route.
We left that location and walked up Portobello Road where some sound systems were setting up and then wandered along Westbourne Park Road where a large crowd of sightseers were watching the carnival progress along Great Western Road at a snail’s pace. We’d managed to find a traffic island to stand on which gave us an extra few inches to see over the tops of other people’s heads so we did get the opportunity to see the colourful costumes and floats and the many well practiced dance routines. That was great fun and everyone had smiles on their faces. That small section of the carnival moved past in about 30 minutes and the road cleared so we thought we would walk further north up to Tavistock Road to catch the next section of the parade as it came down Great Western Road.
It was a great place to watch the parade, but unfortunately the police had instructions to move us along, because if we had all congregated there we would have blocked the footway running alongside Westbourne Park Station (which was closed by the way). So we simply stood back some distance and continued to marvel at the sights.
I don’t know at what rate these carnivals progress along the streets each year, but it was obvious that things weren’t going to plan because the floats were barely moving and had become backed up. This meant that the dancers weren’t really able to perform their routines and frankly it all became a bit of a mess.
Maybe, we thought, if we walked even further north we would catch even more of the parade and maybe, just maybe, things might still be moving. We walked up Great Western Road and past the tube station in single file and went under Westway (A40). The street was rammed solid with us, the sightseers and them, the performers and nothing was moving. In effect we were making the carnival move by walking alongside it; all a bit strange.
We continued to meander our way through ever-increasing crowds to a spot on the road near to the junction with Goldborne Road where we stopped for a good 30 minutes, hoping that the carnival would now progress....but it didn’t. It was here that I witnessed some serious twerking, the like of which I had never witnessed before! In fact, I’ll remember the carnival purely for the twerking by both men and women and in some cases by both; at the same time. The images are simply too graphic to record on this site!
You might be wondering what the toileting facilities were like. The organisers had lain on a few ‘green’ toilets, which made my eyes water and the ladies hover and the local businesses and residents were making a good profit by selling their private facilities for £2 a pop (or a poop), so make sure you go properly and watch how much you drink. Needless to say some of the free toilet blocks had massive queues of cross-legged people.
All along the route and within the vast carnival area there were hundreds of places to buy food and drink and we were intrigued by the huge number of private front gardens that had been converted into shops and cafes for the day. A decent meal would set you back around £7 and you get a tin of Red Stripe for between £2 and £3.
It was about 2:45 pm and having had a good time and experienced the noise and the twerking and the colour we started to become aware of a change in the demographics of the crowd. I spotted a number of groups of young lads aggressively pushing their way through the crowds who were not ‘taking part’ in the festivities and you couldn’t help wonder what they were up to. The throng had become a little younger and it was obvious that the drugs and the drink being consumed were beginning to have a negative effect on the behaviour of a few individuals. Although in a minority there were still a significant number of young men in particular who were drunk on bottles of spirit or high on drugs. Add to this the stench of cannabis, which was now all around us, we decided that now would be a good time to leave the carnival.
The streets had become even more densely packed to the point where we were sometimes being carried along within it, so we did what we could to leave the carnival route, walk along a back street and find something to eat. We discovered that access along certain streets had been fenced off and so we had no choice but to rejoin the carnival route at the top of Ladbroke Grove. However, we did find some respite from the crowd in a small Indian take-away, which was selling some excellent snacks, which the owner kindly allowed us to eat inside.
Having eaten we took a deep breath and wondered outside to make our way back to our starting point. We had no choice other than to walk south along Ladbroke Grove until we reached the junction with Chesterton Road. Our relief at leaving the carnival route, along which, incidentally, the floats were still stationary, was short lived as the sound systems that we had seen setting up earlier were now blasting out the beats with further crowds forming around them. By the time we got back to the southern end of Portobello Road we’d negotiated about six of them.
Our journey from the north end of Ladbroke Grove back through the crowds to Notting Hill Gate station took us about 50 minutes (it would have been 15 minutes without the crowds), but what I found even more remarkable was that as we were leaving the carnival we were walking past thousands of people who were making their way towards it. How on earth all these people would squeeze in I have no idea.
Are we glad we went to the Notting Hill Carnival? Yes! It’s not for everyone, but it was interesting to go back without the police uniform to experience what was mostly good fun.
Would we go again? Unlikely, but if we did we would probably stick to the southern end of the carnival area around Westbourne Grove, because from that end we could have escaped much more quickly!
I might add that we all practiced what I preach on this website about crime prevention and personal security at crowded places and you can read my tips here: http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/robbery-and-theft-risk/784/music-festivals-security-advice/
