Others may have seen the two photos from Notting Hill Carnival of a youth escaping after stabbing someone and a fat bloke trying to trip the toerag up.
Today I read that the fat bloke is in fact a former Leningrad plodski now living here, and evidently a very fine fellow.
Some no doubt will be thinking, yuck, glad I wasn't there, carnival ought to be stopped because that's the sort of thing that happens at it. Not me though. That incident happened about fifty yards from our old gaff of 36 years, and I really wish I had been there still, not for the stabbing of course but for all the rest of it.
It makes me laugh when I hear the mayor saying generously that he didn't think it would be right to call the carnival off. Right or wrong, it isn't something you can cancel at the last minute because a lot of people have spent months working hard for nothing to put it on. And they aren't the sort of people who will take it lying down when someone, even the mayor, spits in their eye.
Carnival is grass roots, genuine popular culture (not Jordan carp) that comes up from the base of society and is essentially leaderless and anarchist. That's why senior plod and the Kensington Council don't like it and want to get it 'under control'. And why they will never ever be able to, thank God.
I am told it was a bit subdued this year, and I'm not surprised. Even so it will have been a wonderful experience for hundreds of thousands of people. I miss it.
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