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Anorak News | Notting Hill Carnival: Not In James Campbell’s Back Yard

Notting Hill Carnival: Not In James Campbell’s Back Yard

by | 29th, August 2007

IT’S like those people who live near football grounds and bemoan the fact that football fans come and make the area noisy and busy.

You can see them popping to the shops at 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon. Or edging through the crowd at Arsenal Tube station at 2:45.

James Campbell, of the Times, who lives in Notting Hill, dontyerknow, writes:

The council workers have almost finished cleaning my street after this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, though the memories linger. As does the stench from the urine of the 1.5 million revellers who descend each year to create Europe’s largest open-air toilet.

Who knew that there was a carnival for two days of the year?

Unfortunately for residents, this strong interventionist style of policing does not extend to their front gardens. As smiling police walked by, I spent most of the weekend knocking on my window to deter micturating revellers. Unfortunately, some of them seem to take my knocks as encouragement, raising their cans of Red Stripe and giving me a friendly “Cheers, man!”.

A front garden? Is there a back garden, too? And might the Times’s man on the scene go and sit in it? Lucky man.

My house was perfectly triangulated between three 10ft-high banks of speakers and I could just about talk on the telephone in a cupboard in the basement. Not that it mattered. The phone network went into a 9/11 style meltdown from millions of lost people texting “Where R U??” to their mates.

Tsk!



Posted: 29th, August 2007 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink