Notting Hill

Phew, Children’s Day at the Notting Hill Carnival was fun! We started early, but until lunch nothing happened. We had our meal in St Charles’, a psychiatric hospital nearby, before heading over to the temporary police headquarters to pick up our packed meals. There I saw something I’d never seen before: there was a live slideshow with pictures and descriptions of wanted people that were expected to attend the Carnival. One woman was allegedly working as an official steward in order to deal class A drugs!

In the afternoon things picked up a little. Our first casualty, who was covered in chocolate (it’s a tradition at the start of the Carnival) was a guy who’d had a bit too much to drink and had collapsed. We had to transport him in an ambulance trolley all the way down Ladbroke grove, weaving in and out of the floats, till we reached the treatments centre. He was unconscious but thankfully hadn’t sustained any injuries and his observations were fine. When he came round four hours later, though, he couldn’t find his wallet and phones. In the time it took us get to him, someone had stolen all his valuables. And on top of all that, he couldn’t remember where he’d parked his car. I felt pretty sorry for the poor guy.

I still haven’t read up how to use the main features on my camera, but here is a picture I took, along with a better one I got from Flickr.