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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Wrong side of the Gate... new