I woke up this morning, the day after the carnival, aching in just about every single joint of my tired frame. Muscles unused for a year were overburdened with the prance and the dance of the streets of Notting Hill. I made the special effort this year, to join in the collective stand of Londoners against the murderous attacks of suicide bombers.
Carnival is the direct opposite of what Islamists claim is good social practice. Alcohol flows in abundance. In almost all the costumed bands the women are barely covered. Bacchus reigns in the expression of all that is openly lewd, suggestive and bawdy - in short, it is a gathering of infidels that must be a prime target for jihadists. Although the carnival has settled over the years to a crowd figure of roughly a million, numbers were down this year. Fear of bombs was the reason, and not the mayor's sideshow.
There was much discussion among those who did attend about the "Caribbean Showcase", staged by Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, as a distraction from the big street parade. Ken's race relations adviser, Lee Jasper, invited us to believe that the Hyde Park event, mounted with taxpayers' funds, was a complementary show mainly to accommodate parents and children. If so, why not hold it on the Sunday, kiddies' day during carnival? If it was complementary, why did it attempt to lure bands away from the main celebration to this puny show in the park? And why the rider - that all those who broke from the festival would be rewarded with participation in the show which will open the Olympics in 2012? Only a tiny number jumped ship, and they regretted doing so, because Ken's show was a miserable event.
You might think that a festival organised by the people and for the people would be welcomed by a populist mayor, but populism is just a short step from autocracy, and this mayor shows an urge to control and centralise. So the carnival can be permitted to survive only if its offices can be sucked into Ken's cultural bureaucracy. Then and only then, when the mayor has the strings controlling the event and the carnival budget in his hands, will Jasper be content.
And yet there is a clear majority of carnivalists, including myself, who would give an arm and a leg in resisting the mayor's control. There is no gain without pain. So, as I amble achingly around my home, I console myself that it was all in the pursuit of a good cause.
