Notting Hill Carnival- a great London spectacle.

Notting Hill Carnival- a great London spectacle.

So here we are rapidly charging towards autumn. The leaves on the trees are still green and healthy looking and today we have been presented with some of the most handsome late summer sunshine that we can only hope will last for quite some time. The summer has been a summer of stark contrasts. June was pleasant and moderately satisfying, July was good, soggy, overcast and then intermittently warm, lovely but then ever so slightly disappointing. Still we've all got through the summer with perhaps one or two mumblings and rumblings of discontent but then we were suddenly reminded that it was probably a typical English summer.

August, likewise, has been full of light and shade, drizzly outbursts, heavy cloud cover, more torrential rain and then what some of us have come to recognise as dull and miserable days where all you want to do is hide under the bed covers and just throw in the white towel of surrender. Still there were the redeeming days when Britain had those richly nuanced mornings and afternoons when everything in the world felt just right. Yesterday, for instance was gorgeously summery and you wanted the day to go on for ever. Of course we've had weeks like this before but the consistency has been distinctly lacking.

Still this is the August Bank Holiday weekend and it's time to get out and about for perhaps the last time before the days draw in, 3.30 in the afternoon feels more like mid-night and autumn makes her gusty and blustery entrance, blowing fitfully at first and then intensifying by the day. Shortly the leaves on our finest and most venerable trees will fall achingly to the ground, chasing each other and scurrying around in the traditional fashion before assuming that rather sad, yellowish and pale colour that breaks your heart.

But this is the weekend that marks the beginning of the Notting Hill Carnival and already you can almost hear those delightful steel drums ringing mellifluously across West London because the Notting Hill Carnival provides London with her yearly soundtrack. It is that explosion of Caribbean colour, personality. happiness, mirth and merriment. It is that wonderful celebration of everything that London holds dear, that superb and wondrous spectacle where the young and old dance, boogie, shake their hips, smiling, laughing, acknowledging family, friends, beliefs and old fashioned attitudes that are positive rather than negative.

London has always prided itself on its proud multi-culturalism, its inclusivity and its broad acceptance of the strange, curious, eccentric and unusual. But the Notting Hall Carnival, for just over 50 years has given us street pageantry, life affirming music, jerk chicken, dancing policemen and women and a whole lot of love, cheesiness at times but the coolest of vibrant vibes.

Sadly, the Notting Hill has also been slightly overshadowed by the darker forces of crime, violence and controversial confrontations with the police. There have been disturbing clashes, mini riots and skirmishes, all of those darkly unnecessary events that should never have been associated with the Carnival at any time. But thankfully recent years have been mostly trouble free and harmony has been gratefully restored just when the fists and dangerous weapons may have intervened.

The first day of the Notting Hill Carnival is normally taken over by the children of London, a glorious outpouring of exuberant youth where the kids take to the streets wearing all of those outrageously coloured outfits that stretch as far as the eye can see. The smiling multitudes bang on their drums with an extraordinary passion, feeling, fervour and an uninhibited joy. If only the rest of the human race could take a leaf out of their book.

By Bank Holiday Monday morning the Carnival will be awash with spectacular processions of dancing, prancing, happy go lucky, deeply overjoyed people from everywhere. Shortly a small corner of West London will become transformed but only for a while. This is not to say that after Carnival the good people of Notting Hill suddenly refrain from boozy bacchanalia and frolicsome frolics but the Carnival is famously energetic, wondrously atmospheric and feels as though it should always be like that.  Realistically though it has to go back to the everyday business of every day life and that's when the anti-climax may set in with a vengeance.

Still the day will go ahead and we will marvel at those astonishing, rainbow coloured beach shirts that the men and boys seem to take great delight in flaunting. Then we'll watch in wonder as the women shake their feathers, the glittery dresses, the flags and banners and of course more steel drums. The whole event snakes and winds its way around Notting Hill's by now elated back streets with a sense of euphoric well being and a genuine zest for life.

The smell of jerk chicken has always hung alluringly in the Notting Hill air, smoke drifting from the stalls rather like a camp fire in some distant wood. Then a vast parade of humanity files along in orderly fashion, grinning gleefully for the TV cameras, then thumping those drums in some entranced state as if to suggest that life should always be cherished and never taken for granted. It is a musical festival, echoing blasts of ska, rap, salsa and Northern soul music from every ghetto blaster in the land.

Then at the end of the day when the final incense sticks have been blown and the food rubbish has been completely swept away, evening will fall on another August Bank Holiday and the Carnival will take its warm place in London's most cultural history books. People will slowly walk back to their homes and the local residents will pray that everything has passed off peacefully. For those of us who have never been to Notting Hill the news images may be just enough to bring a beaming smile to our faces.

Yet the very concept of an English Bank Holiday at the end of August still leaves us slightly flummoxed. It is safe to assume that most of us will take the obvious opportunity to drive down to our invigorating seaside resorts where the gulls await with the keenest anticipation for their late August feed on the pier. But we don't mind because Southend, Brighton, Margate, Bournemouth and Blackpool still tick all the right boxes because that's what Bank Holidays are all about.

Maybe and quite nostalgically we may hope that the Mods, Teddy Boys and Girls and the Rockers will pull up thrillingly on their Vespa scooters, leather coats glistening with history, hair swept back neatly and all ready to roar along the sea front with perfect enthusiasm. For this was the way it was back in the 1960s when Brighton came alive just a hint of anarchy in the air but good natured all the same.

Here in Britain the August Bank Holiday is more or less the final seasonal chapter of the year. Before long we'll all be closing our doors, switching on the central heating, battening down the hatches, gazing out at darkening, brooding skies and then wishing it was spring and summer again. Those winter chills and shivering breezes will leave most of the nation regretful but cosy. The sweat shirts and pullovers will be aired for their annual deployment, Premier League football discussions will be properly to the fore and that world famous festival a week before the end of the year will totally pre-occupy us with all its religious and spiritual relevance. Still we can always look back to that final weekend in August when all was well in the world and even Donald Trump was overlooked. What a relief.