Dancing in the streets

By PETER CALDER

What a difference three decades make. The last time I was in this sort of street mayhem was in the early 70s in northeast Brazil when music was made on musical instruments and was loud enough to light your fire without any amplification.

Their event - which they spelt "Carnaval" and which Creole cultures further north called Mardi Gras - marked the eve of Lent and was a chance for a final burst of profligate joy before the sober self-denial of the weeks leading up to Easter (the very word, related to "carnivore", refers to the end of meat-eating).

The English weather being what it is, its equivalent is held at the height of summer, the August Bank Holiday weekend when there is at least the glimmer of a chance of sunshine. And if this year's, the 38th , is any yardstick, it gives the lie to the image of the English as staid and reserved.

The Carnival, of course, is a celebration of the nation's immigrant, rather than indigenous, culture. When it started in the early 1960s, Notting Hill, about midway between the late Princess Diana's digs in Kensington Palace and the stately expanse of Lords Cricket Ground, was the city's little West Indies. These days, helped in part by that film, it is one of London's trendier and pricier neighbourhoods, where even a one-bedroom flat will set you back half a million Pacific pesos.

But the Caribbean influence is still strong: at least half the faces and all the most enthusiastic dancers are black.

You hear the Carnival before you see it. Swept along in the torrent of humanity exiting the tube at Westbourne Park, your ears ringing from the public announcement warnings to beware of pickpockets, you can feel your sternum hum and your fillings rattle as the music seems to ooze from the trees lining the streets. It starts as a distant thunder but quickly turns into a high-pressure system of decibels which deserve a health warning.

On every street, rock-festival-sized PA systems pound out the electronic concoctions of DJs, almost all of whom are advertising recordings of their work. Oddly, on the parade route itself, the long breaks between floats provide a chance for the ears to recover.

"It goes on all day," one of the 12,000 police officers in attendance tells me when I wonder if I've missed it. "But it's not constant. They just come past when they feel like it.

"It's chaos," he adds with a smile, "as usual."

Chaos it may be but it's cheerful. And deafening. Crowds lining the parade route are assailed with sound from speakers barely a metre from their faces. Few block their ears and many of the trucks are surrounded by dancing devotees like the samba schools of the carnival in Rio.

Making noise seems compulsory and I wade through it, silently agog and feeling old-fashioned. Everyone else joins in with a vengeance. Whistles, hooters and air horns are on sale everywhere - a 6-year-old girl offers me one and stares after me with something approaching pity when I refuse - and any pocket of silence is quickly filled to bulging.

But Notting Hill is not all noise. It smells, too, of charcoal-grilled chicken and corn, of jambalaya and fish stew, and marijuana smoke so thick non-smokers need to be careful not to inhale. Behind iron fences, tiny front yards have become instant kitchens, fitted out with tin-foil bains-marie and plastic rubbish bins full of ice.

"Try some of my sorrel," urges a young man, thrusting a polystyrene cup full of raspberry-coloured liquid at me. It's a Caribbean tonic, he promises, which will revive me and purify my blood. I find myself wishing it might dull my sense of hearing for a while.

But if it's an aural endurance test, the carnival is a visual treat. The floats are mostly trucks carrying generators and the DJs working the sound systems they power. But the groups which precede them, themselves led by backward-walking marshals and two bobbies well protected with police-issue earplugs, are the carnival's real delight. Resplendent in costumes which can take months to make, the marchers, many of them children under school age, capture the spirit of what's billed as Europe's biggest street party. Appropriately in the Queen's jubilee year, many have chosen gold as their defining colour and in masses which take 10 minutes to pass a given point, they shine as bright as the sun.

Police estimates of crowd numbers had a total of 1.5 million on the streets of an area about as big as Parnell over the carnival's two days and suggested that as many as half of those were there at the celebration's peak on Sunday night. Yet barely 200 arrests were made and the atmosphere was as relaxed as might be imagined.

And, if organisers are to be believed, by the time you read this, the most devoted participants will be designing their costumes for next year. They're waiting for you. Enjoy. But don't forget the earplugs.

Notting Hill Carnival