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An invitation to break you haphazard sobriety Thirst and appetite will grow with more of the rum The Hotwax MasBand shirts don’t call for moderation Wrapped around the shapes of the black beauties Photo Hugh Ardoin The Notting Hill 2018 Carnival Gallery
Parading in bright colored feathers Icebreaker and heart broker Young bird of paradise A toast on the lips And a drink in the hand From the Venus in Furs To the Venus in Feathers The same always suffer Photo Hugh Ardoin The Notting Hill 2018 Carnival Gallery
Good humored troublemakers move down Chepstow A girlie pack shouting and prancing making the best of Carnival The shrinking hill as the police block more roads every year They have announced that this year’s event will be cancelled Collective punishment looms as fear mounts in the higher circles I assume they believe that joy is […]
Something about the Kingdom of Danemark The allegory or the symbol of the Empire Strikes Back Tiny islands scattered in the Caribbean Sea find a voice Be it only for two days in a year they wield their power From Windrush to Covid they still fulfill the rare active role In a navel-contemplating socially distanced […]
Nostalgia sending tremors racing down your spine But we need the bass to feel it through the marrow Nothing can replace live, cancelling live amounts to slaughter The master slavers are back with the whips and the masks of fear They say it’s for your own good, wait till the nanny grows a black mustache […]
Notting Hill Carnival is the mix of generations and cultures It was designed by Claudia Jones Cumberbatch as such To ease the relations between communities bringing them together Racist murder and attacks against the black community led to riots Carnival was the best solution in a post-war England fraught with tensions And widespread racial prejudice […]
The BLM Beauties set the tune Enough is Enough is the motto Referring to the 1619 Project Symbolic date of August 20th 1619 Arrival of the first African slaves in North America Photo Hugh Ardoin The Estates of Emergency Gallery
The carnal temptations on the road to perdition that we will miss The flesh, feathers and glitter in the embodiment of a midsummer dream The trade winds from the faraway islands bring the music and the spirits To the dull grey shores of London where a muddy Thames plays with the tides It will take […]
The slogan is short but it has wings It will fly and flutter but shall not falter What is started must be carried to its end The flower and the fruit are sweet But it is the seed that is bitter Beyond the word it is the will Beyond the will it is the goal […]
From my nine year Chepstow archive The frozen road movie of the Carnival saga Hoping that the community will find the courage To challenge the cancellation and the interdictions Carnival is older than BLM but stems from similar events Race riots following the murder of Kelso Cochrane by racists in 1959 Claudia Jones Cumberbatch organised […]