august 2001 - my london diary

august for me started and finished with a carnival. on the first i went down to Hayling Island with paul baldesare and dave trainer and we spent an interesting afternoon in a rather different world.

hitler, churchill and elvis are among those i photographed there, along with some other figures who seemed to belong to an earlier age.
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i took two holidays in august, a week with friends in Weston-super-Mare,
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and a short break in Lille by Eurostar. (OK, I realise these are not london, but thought I'd put a few pictures up here even so.) The journey is really a little short to eat breakfast in comfort, and like other French cities, Lille is somewhat closed in august. i was surprised by the good public transport and other facilities in the town, another reminder of how far we are falling behind the rest of europe in many ways.
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brixton village carnival was a PR non-event, but kids are always good to photograph, although you need to be very careful about how you do it not to come under suspicion as some kind of pervert.

walking through chinatown i came across this group outside a restuarant.

the largest street festival in europe, with around two million packed into a square mile or so of the city. possibly this will be the last real notting hill carnival, with talk next year of routes leading to hyde park or elsewhere out of the area.

the kind of usually amiable and goodnatured anarchy which has always characterized carnival was slightly compromised this year by overactive policing of the carnival route. there were threats that there would not be a carnival, and the prospect for next year seems poor.

although there are always a few problems that hit the headlines, the level of violence and crime is seldom much greater than would be expected from the same number of people on another day in London.

carrying several thousand pounds worth of under-insured equipment, I like to leave before dark.

sunday is childrens' day, and less crowded than the monday, where the crowds are too dense in many areas to allow any sensible photography. the north end of Notting Hill is less packed and is where most of my pictures are taken.
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