'Who Ate all the Pies' and Other Stories from the Long Weekend

Notting Hill in full Carnival flight

The arrival of Ry, Kathy and Tristan in London, plus Bank Boliday, seemed like the recipe for a big weekend, and a big weekend it was! Putney for beers on Friday, down to Clapham Common for SW4 on Saturday, morning fry up at Chiswick, then Spitalfields for some market action on Sunday and finally Notting Hill Carnival on Monday.

South West 4

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With Ry and Tam at SW4

more SW four

SW4 brought some of the 90's dancefloor greats (Carl Cox, Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfeld etc) to Clapham Common. It also brought what must have been one of the world's longest queues to get into an event, stretching the full length of two sides of the enclosure. Being too cool for skool (as always) most of what we wanted to see was on too early (James Zabelia, Stanton Warriors), though we did make our way to a tent for Shape Shifters and Seb Fontaine which was pretty damn good!

Also, as you may have guessed from the title, there were also some pretty good pies on offer!

Dancing in the Aisles @ Tescos

Spitalfields (again)

Who ate all the pies?

Looking to calm things down somewhat on Sunday, we thought a nice respectable breakfast at Chiswick followed by a leisurely stroll around Spitalfields Market might be in order... and this defintely was required... and all was looking good with cleansing Chinese remedy shakes until the desire for pavement beers became too much. The all too regular Spitalfields pub crawl ensued (we've got to impress the guests!), making a mockery of the hope for rest and recuperation. Still you can't go too wrong with a few pints in the late summer sun follow by some fried chicken for dinner!

And, it should be noted that once again the ubiquitous Square Pie company was on hand to ensure we had sufficient sustenance!

An excercise in shadow

Bevvies in the Sun at the infamous Ten Bells

Near the beach?

Aimes and Tam ripping up Brick Lane

Monday was Notting Hill Carnival day, supposedly the biggest street festival in London. After introducing Ry to the cultural delights of Wetherspoons in W12 and watching a gale blow past, we made the short walk to Notting Hill (one of the benefits of living in SheBu). Punctual as always, it seems we arrived a few hours too early and the streets were pretty much deserted, except for the market stalls starting the chicken fry up, the floats practising on their steel drums in the back streets, the possies of cops on every corner and the massive speaker stacks being warmed up.

Jamaican Stack

Caught by the Fuzz

Jerky goodness

A couple of Red Stripes later and the Carnvial was starting to rock, it was definitely a street party the likes of which we had never experienced, something like 600,000 people crammed into the backstreets of W11, more speaker stacks than you could imagine and the biggest Jerk-Chicken-Off this side of Kingston!

The obsession with speaker stacks is such that when one of the floats passes by it is almost painful to stand within 5m of it. There are stacks on just about every corner of the whole suburb, most well over 2m high, begging the question of where they all reside for the other 364 days of the year when there aren't Caribbean street festivals?

Corny

Illegal immigrants escape

Despite the Carnival resembling very slightly organised chaos (the street being jammed solid with spectators between the floats which passed at 30 minute intervals) we had a pretty awesome time. You never know what to expect around any corner, be it some massive housey rave, some chav kids going nuts to some drum and base or yet another jerk chicken stall. We'll be back next year for sure!

Too much Red Stripe

So barring any late onset tinnitus or salmonella poisoning it was a pretty awesome weekend - even if it doesn't really feel like it right now :) Fortunately the fact that we head to Barcelona on Thursday arvo makes this an extra short week so we might just make it....

White City

Notting Hill