Final days of Summer

An offer came, in the form of an Irish adventure, so I took it, but had some last minute summer London things to tick off my list. Cue a big two weeks to end August. From nights out in Hoxton, Covent Garden and Battesea, to Tate Modern, coffee at St. Pauls, a failed attempt to go to a pre-Olympics basketball tournament resulting in a leisurely Sunday afternoon sightseeing walk along the Thames North Bank, a visit to the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall, a night and morning dance session at Ministry of Sound, a play at Shakespeare’s Globe, attendance at the infamous ‘Church’ on a Sunday afternoon and last but not least the Notting Hill Carnival (shout out to Steve on his short trip around Europe for catching up with me for this one, and for the tim tams). I’m glad to say I got out of the last one alive after a near crushing episode. We got there early before the crowds and wondered what all the fuss was about. Throughout the day it picked up and at about 4pm the crowds were becoming thick. We decided it would be a great idea to head up the extremely crowded street against the flow of the parade to check out a couple more floats before we headed off. Amazingly it turned out to be not such a good idea. After 20 metres, we soon became separated, another ten metres and we found ourselves turning back, it felt like being caught in a rip in the ocean. Suddenly, one of the parade truck’s on the other side of the road decided it would be good idea to stop moving, stop their music and tell everyone in the immediate vicinity that those wanting to move up and down the street should make their way to the pavement. Well done people!! This caused a mass amount of people to move to the pavement, where we happened to be, and the truck who hadn’t moved on yet was taking up vital extra space. So the final result was two minutes of almost panic by everyone. I was so jammed in I could not even put my hands down by my side. Several people around had started to panic, to whom I tried to calm down, thankfully no one started pushing and eventually I made it out of there. Reunited with my friends where we had started from about ten minutes earlier, we all quickly left Notting Hill, satisfied we had got close enough to the action and called it a day.