Carnival Sunday Pictures Page I
Carnival Sunday Pictures Page II

As the sun rose, so did we.
Steflion,The Lioness and I gathered our chattel and got into the car for the drive to Notting Hill. We had to be on site by 0900 otherwise we would not be allowed through the Police roadblocks. This year was going to be more difficult for parking around the carnival area as they had extended the restriction zone. The journey to Carnival was punctuated by numerous stops in an effort to purchase Steflion's beverage of choice, chilled bottled ice coffee and fresh rolls.

This was not as simple as it sounds because being the Bank Holiday weekend, fresh is not a word that could be used to describe some of the flour based products being sold. Add that to the fact that most of the stores did not sell Steflion's beverage, it was a journey time extended by almost 40 minutes.

After entering numerous shops and stores along our way, we finally got what we required and could now head unhindered to Carnival.

I dropped the Lioness, Stef and the chattel by the footbridge and then made my way out of the restriction zone to try and find a safe parking spot.

The parking wardens were like locusts and their grasp of the native language appeared to be non existent. I say this because everytime I approached a warden on my wayward quest to find a space, they looked at me as if I was speaking gibberish. Example, "There is no sign prohibiting parking. Can I park here?" Completely blank and disconcerned looks. Not even an acknowledgement to my question. They just continued writing out parking tickets and sticking them on cars. Well not wanting to come back and find my car decorated with tickets or even worst, towed away, I ended up parking about a mile and a half away from the Harrow Road.

As I walked from the car towards our Carnival spot I pondered on how the Lioness with heavy bags and especially Stef, who recently had a compound broken hip, would fare on the walk to the car. At least I would have peace of mind and the car would still be where I parked it, I hoped!

11:45 When I arrived at our spot after my long trod from the car, the stall was in the final stages of construction and the speaker stacks were nearly erected. Jahorge, Babs, Babar and Mark were making up the plastic sheeting to cover the speakers from the pending rain.
The Blood Shanti clan were laying out the stock, so has not to have too many cooks, I went and checked the stability of the speaker installations.

Due to the Police having their HQ in the school adjacent to where we were set up, the stack to the right had been moved forward which meant it was on an incline. This made it slightly rocky. (I noticed this from across the road when I observed Babar doing his impression of a metronome as he stood on the top of the stack awaiting the plastic sheeting) Did I say slightly, I meant one good bass line and it would have tumbled like the walls of Jericho. Not exactly safe! I made some large wedges and secured the stack.

12:30 As we were finalising the set up the Health & Safety guys and council officials came to check not only our installation but also our permits. This is where it gets interesting. The plans that the H&S guys had showed a much bigger area then we had occupied and they wanted to know why we had condensed our space. We had to point out the Police access, which meant we couldn't expand beyond a certain point.
They did not have the Police access marked on their plans. They and the council officers were also concerned about the size of the stall and the fact that according to their map it was in the wrong place!
Well I pointed out that a food stall was already positioned in the location they stated was our spot when we arrived. We were never given a location map for our stall, so the council officers waving maps at us were redundant. As to the size, I asked what the dimensions of the stall should be and was told 2m x 4m. The council officers were 'Jobs Worths' and were trying to flex like they had some power with much murmuring of we will have to move our stall and make it smaller with veiled and not so veiled threats of stopping us from playing.
Our stall was not 2 metres deep and certainly not 4 metres long, so it had to be within regulations.

After much discussion, which was starting to upset man and man, I asked the $1,000,000 question,
"Have you got a tape measure so we can measure it ?"
They looked at me rather sheepishly. It appears that for all their talk about size, they had no implement to measure the dimensions. So argument done!
They had to depart and left us with the stall as it was.

If the council officers wanted to demonstrate that they had power they should have made sure that sites / plots designated for official permit holding stall holders and sound systems were enforced, so that interlopers did not bandoloo their spot. Making sure that maps were given to all with the proviso that if they stole another permit holder's site they would be barred from selling and have to shut down.
Not pressure man and man who turn up to find that a full hot food installation, inclusive of large gas bottles and burners had been erected late the night before in their spot. I can understand why the food seller didn't want to take his allotted spot and stole ours, as his was directly opposite the chemical toilets. Yeah, not nice.

14:00 Aba started the sound check and immediately the interloper food seller came over and asked us to turn it down. Turn it down! We told him that this was just the sound check and rather than get quieter it would get remarkably louder. He started complaining that it was affecting his heart and that he would complain to the Police. I told him that the Police would be having their own problems with the sound level and providing we did not go over 103db there was nothing they could do! This, after we let him stay after he hi-jacked our stall spot. The council officers wanted him to move and for us to take our rightful place, ungrateful or what?
Well he left and returned to his stall with a ringing in his ears and his tail between his legs.

Mark continued the sound check with input from Gemi and Charles.
Well the sound check acted like a rallying call and the two oriental gentlemen that were dancing were soon joined by the Hulk, Captain America, Cat Woman, Nurse in short uniform with red underwear and a host of other cartoon super heroes.

15:00 In a very short time our spot was filling up and we had a mass of people rocking.
We were experiencing sound problems and our usual sound quality was not in evidence when Aba dropped the bass. The mids weren't exactly punchy either. Charles turned up and proceeded to track down the perceived phasing problem by elimination with numerous linking cables draped over his shoulder. I have a reasonable ear for sound, 'Sonic De Dread Hog' you might say and so decided to do a little sound investigating myself.

I noticed that the generator was emitting dark smoke and went to investigate…Eureka!
I found that the power was being taken from the 30 amp outlet and that the 63 amp outlet not being used.
The sound problems were down to not enough current. I went and told Aba but he hadn't brought a 63-amp plug with him. So not having enough power made Aba play the whole session very carefully so as not to trip the generator. But it did trip once or twice during the course of the day.

15:20 I was taking photos when something odd struck me. No I didn't get hit by strange flying debris.
It was the movement of the people or rather the lack of it. Normally there is a constant flow of revellers through our spot and even though people were swelling the crowd already present, the street to our right where the food stall was didn't seem to have anything like the number of people I would have expected.
So I went to investigate. Just call me 'Jah Lock Bones', parody of Sherlock Holmes, yer no see?
As I walked down the road I could see the problem straightaway. The Police had created a cordon and were stopping people from entering the road we were on. They were forcing them to walk against the parade and walk a very, very long way round to get to not only us but the other sounds in the area, Good Times (Norman Jay), Sancho Panza, Midnight Xpress and us. The people remonstrating with the Police were getting more and more upset. I went around the other streets and the Police had blocked them off also.
Effectively the Police were not letting anymore people into the area where the above sounds were playing.
This was not good and I could see nothing but trouble coming from this course of action.

16:30 Today was the Olympic hand over and the park where the big screens were installed to display this event was jammed. But the Police had only one entrance and exit open making sure that the people in the park could not get onto the streets they had blocked off. So the people were climbing over the fence which meant the Police had rapid deployment squads of Police constantly rushing around to either reinforce the cordons or stop people scaling the park fences.
Well they say that water finds it own level, and will sweep away anything in its path to get to its destination. So to with the people wanting to get to Aba, they found a way of reaching where they wanted to be and the throng was up to expected Sunday levels.Sunday is Roots revival day and the crowd rocked to some serious classics and the time just went.

19:00 Aba signs off and thanks the assembled for attending. Stef made me laugh when he asked were we going to leave the sound and stall set up for tomorrow (Monday) and was shocked when I told him that we have to break it down and pack it away. Take it back to our warehouse and tomorrow drive it back into carnival and re erect it all again.

21:00 Breaking down of the stall and the sound took only 2 hours. Stef, The Lioness and I said our farewells until tomorrow and made the trek slowly back to where I had parked the car.

The noticeable thing and it was eerie almost surreal, was that the roads off Harrow Road were all quiet.
In past years the roads would have been full of people and cars. Music would have been emanating from all quarters and the smell of numerous impromptu barbecues would have caressed the nostrils. But this year not a one. As we walked down the road we noticed that the Police were out in full force. Halfway down the street there was two police minibuses and at every corner there were two minibuses. There must have been an awful lot of police deployed at this year's Carnival. That explains the quiet streets.

Bless up to the Cartoon Characters, Steflion, Tony, Gemi, Charles, Mark, Debs, Babar, Babs, Jahorge, Danny (MITH), Steflion, Sis Millie, Bob, The Blood Shanti Tribe, Sweet T, Mikey Muscle, Steve, Ras Earl, Lioness, Samira (Much Love), The European and the Worldwide Crus.

Carnival Monday 2008

The Humble Lion

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