The second biggest street party in the world, don't you know

To the Notting Hill Carnival on Sunday for my first time, and it sort of encapsulated everything about London. Up from the Central Line at Holland Park station (not Notting Hill Gate; Whitehall, my friend and guide said, that's for Carnival virgins) and meandering through tony, posh Ladbroke Grove, with its whitewashed Victorian townhouses, Chelsea tractors parked imperiously just inside vine covered gated drives. Richard Curtis London.

Then: turning into the Carnival, and the speed changes, a needle scratching along a classical LP and replaced by booming hip hop. Rammed shoulder to shoulder with a mass of multi-coloured, multi-cultural, multi-this-and-that humanity, accompanied by the thump-thump-thump of drum n bass, Afro beats, steel drums, a new sound around each corner and dancing, drinking, dancing, drinking. Zadie Smith London.


Then: sampling dubious looking but delicious but overpriced jerk chicken, several anxious waits in a port-a-loo queue, idly wondering why there are no bins and who the hell is going to clean up this mess, and finally the inevitably delayed, sweaty fug of an overcrowded tube ride home.