Carnival

                                                                        

Most – no, this year  ALL- of my Notting Hill friends escape for carnival. Whenever I am in London and have possession of my flat, I cannot help but revel childishly in Carnival. I see all the floats pass by my window on Ladbroke Grove. This morning, at 6.45 I was awoken by the very first steel band accompanying the first revellers of J’Ouvais, the traditional first wave of Carnival. I confess to shedding a little tear of joy and excitement at the appearance of the paint- splattering participants. In 1988 I partook of J’Ouvais in Port of Spain, Trinidad with my then husband John. We flew over  from Tobago in a little plane just for the evening before Carnival, when no one sleeps in Port of Spain. The whole city  vibrates as everyone dances, jumps, shouts and throws paint, chocolate, flour, sugar and anything else at hand in a first orgiastic expression of carnival fever. (picture below of a 'blue Devil, a traditional J'Ouvais character). At eight  the following morning we flew back to Tobago, and the flight crew had to cover our seats with plastic in order to let us sit down, we were so encrusted with carnival debris .  

Another year I took part in all of Carnival at Port of Spain and danced with the legendary band of Peter Minchall, Trinidadian Carnival designer extraordinaire. We were ‘the Desert Storm’, and dressed in far too voluminous outfits. Minchall’s aesthetics always won over more practical considerations- we were to dance through  the streets of Port of Spain for ca 18 hours after all, but that was of no interest to him ... Onlookers stood ready in the streets and gardens of the city with drinks, sweets and SALT as we danced past – it is amazing how one craves salt after 12 hours continuous dancing !

Traditional carnival behaviour includes the 'wining',  which is, to be honest, more or less simulated sex while dancing with total strangers. It is all part of carnival and actually quite innocent- at least I have always found it so. During carnivals in Port of Spain the 'wining' is extreme, but it always goes as far as one wants it, and no further. If one has had enough, one just leaves, and 'wines' somewhere else. But when I 'did' Carnival in Rio one year in the early 2000's, I found that Brazilians seemed to be much more easily chocked. I 'wined' like I used to in Port of Spain, and my dancing partners definitely thought, quite mistakenly, that I was 'up for it'. I shrugged my shoulders and rolled my eyes  at such provincial attitudes and suggested they should get out more and experience carnival at

Port of Spain..

Some years ago my brother Anders used to stay with me often in my Notting Hill flat when he worked in London. He was with me one Carnival for the whole experience including the J’Ouvais madness; then onto the time honoured Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues, run by the son of blues legend John Mayall at the Globe in Talbot Road where we parked ourselves for the duration of Carnival, to the rythms of Rock Steady, Ska and early Marley, as well as fabulous jazz/blues live offerings.

Alas, this year as I directed my steps once again  to the legendary Globe on Talbot Road I was profoundly disappointed to find that just this year there was a break- no Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues until next year for ‘Family reasons’ ! Oh, NO! 

Today the rain is pelting down on the Carnival revellers as they pass by my Ladboke Grove window. But no one seems to mind. I am casting my eyes over the sea of humanity gyrating to the strains of Soca- that life giving sound from Trinidad that doesn’t really live outside the frame of carnival. How much fun there is to be had at carnival, and I am very grateful that I am able to suck it in. It would be very easy to turn one’s nose up and say’ No, thank goodness I am escaping to the country side!’ but Glory hallelujah I am still childish enough to love carnival...

Hippie Chick

Mostly one doesn’t know what people think  of one. It is always interesting, of course, to hear reports... like the other day when my friend Nicholas put his foot in it and it became clear that our mutual friend Alice Walpole- who is now in Baghdad, but who was the British ambassador to Mali last year- had described me in a certain way... He back pedalled but I insisted that he told me: how had she described me? And there it was: I am a ‘hippie chick’ according to Alice.

I don’t mind in the slightest. Hell, yeah,  I am a hippie chick! We had all the best music- there is simply no comparison.  I am sitting here at home tonight  cutting stencils for the work tomorrow , and I am listening to Jethro Tull- how lovely. Thick as a Brick, Aqualung- have not heard this for years- how evocative and how it transports me far away- well, not geographically as a matter of fact, only to the little village of Blewbury which featured in this journal for the wedding just a couple of weeks ago... that is where I spent some of my early years, indeed as a little hippie chick with my boyfriend, later husband Mike (picture above). And what else did we listen to? Ah, the Doors, Hendrix, Dylan, Led Zeppelin- and Traffic. The latter band used to spend time on the Downs and we ran into them now and then- Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi. They wrote a song called ‘Girl from the Villages’- we thought we knew the girl who inspired it.  And they recorded  the sweetest old English folksong called John Barleycorn which I just remembered and found- What joy to have Spotify!

Later, sure, I dived in and took what was new and good and came along- I became potty over the Pixies and must have been to all their mad London gigs in the beginning of the nineties- and there was Nirvana of course and Mudhoney- whose singer/songwriter I ran into in Bamako a couple of years ago...

And now? A lot of classical  - which I have also always loved.  And all the Malian music of course, which I used to listen to with Keita, who was a great music lover.

Not sad exactly...

I have every reason to be rejoicing: tomorrow I am beginning to paint the floor canvas for Auckland Castle. I have just returned from a lovely short holiday in Sweden. My dear god children have just passed their A-levels with flying colours. Soon there will be an exhibition at the British Library  celebrating the manuscripts of Djenne, and that is perhaps something that I might be proud of. On Saturday some great friends are coming for dinner and we will have fun- for sure.

But I am listening to Kar-Kar  (Boubakar Traore) and nostalgia for the  joyous times in the old, happier Mali is invading my soul. How lucky I was to live there and for a brief few golden years experience such an idyll at my hotel!

Mali have chosen their president, and it is IBK once more, with 67.17% of the votes. But Malians  went to the urns with scant enthusiasm, and only 34.84% of the population bothered at all, as the population  has seemingly lost their belief in the possibility of change, in peace and the return  of better times.

And Aretha has left us today... RIP great lady.