Mimsing back and forth through my former manor during the past week, catching buses with the car having its cambelt changed, I have looked sentimentally upon the huge flowering of yellow notices warning people to take their motors somewhere else during carnival. It hardly applies to us now as we are staying temporarily on the wrong side of the Gate and will have to walk to get a taste of carnival, instead of having it coming past our house the way it should.
We did drop in at Panorama for an hour or two last night. Panorama is the steel band competition, judged by experts, the Trinidadian heart of carnival. It has been in Hyde Park for the past three or four years but has now returned to Kensal road - something to do with cuts perhaps, but to me very welcome. They have taken the amplification and big screen that were used in the park so that now people don't have to crowd in close to hear the bands. The amplification is a bit coarse and crude but roving cameras give good closeups of the badass razor haircuts on some of the Ebony players...
It is a great and terrible loss to me, the whole of carnival at my feet, passing my door. Now people who don't know me will think I'm a tourist. Soon perhaps I will actually become one.
Damn!
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Happy Birthday Lud ~ enjoy the Carnival,
it must be really something, especially when it used to pass by your door!
We used to go to the Carnival in Tenerife which was mue bien amigo.
Last edited by: Dog on Sun 29 Aug 10 at 18:51
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Mil gracias senor perro...
Waddled down as far as Westbourne Grove just by the Beller late this afternoon and leaned against a wall for an hour while a few sound systems passed with their prancing retinues. Soul food actually, most cheering, one decent doobie discreetly consumed, then just round the corner to a friend's flat in the Beller, the whole mews security protected just for the duration, cup of tea, now back on the wrong side again waiting for the Iraqis to take us to the pub to celebrate Ramadan.
Last two years the Soca systems have been on a massive great tweeter jag, weird high-decibel twitters and tweets and mobile ringtones writ enormously large, 10,000 people feeling for their phones, oh yeah... This year though they are back in woofer country, special jarring burps that shake first your liver, then your pancreas, then your family jewels. But I will miss them rattling the big bolts in the massive front door of our old house.
Anyone who likes a nice sound should dip a toe into carnival. Sheikh Rattleandroll definitely should. It's a blast. Of course today was children's day, a bit softer than tomorrow. But we have to move house tomorrow so our participation is iffy.
I may try to get a decent camera next year and come as a tourist.
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I hate carnival.
It heralds in the end of summer - winter is coming.
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Oh do stop being such a Pollyanna Zeddo...
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Carnivals are not for those of a noyvous disposition IMO, The Tenerife Carnival is one of the biggest and most spectacular events of its kind in the World, attracting around a million people,
The Burial of the Sardine is something to experience, folks dressed in mourning clothes parade a ginormous Sardine through the streets to the the desperate cries for the death of the sardine by the widows, It also highlights the mockery of the Church with many participants dressed as popes, bishops and nuns imitating blessings and other religious rites in many cases accompanied by sexual objects, especially phallic :}
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Wrong side of the Gate... - Dog
