Carnival, Chaos & Finding Home

Step One: Carnival Convenes (Whether You’re Ready or Not)

At exactly 9:02 a.m., Jamie’s bedroom door burst open to reveal Raj wearing what appeared to be a child’s lion onesie, an old tube map draped around his shoulders like a cape, and a tie-dyed feather boa. “Emergency!” he declared. “We require your best party wear, at least two colors, glitter optional but strongly encouraged.”

Jamie peeled a sleep mask from their eyes, blinking at the shape in the doorway. “It’s Saturday.”

Doris shimmied into view behind Raj. Her appearance explained the sudden spike in local sequin sales: she sported a carnival headdress that eclipsed her face. “We’re assembling a contingent! Notting Hill Carnival waits for no man!”

From the kitchen drifted the clatter of Megan, already layering on her fourth shade of neon eyeshadow, and what sounded suspiciously like Gavin attempting to tune a bongo (to E major, according to his sticky notes).

Jamie considered protesting. Then considered Doris’s glare. “I own exactly one clean shirt.”

“Not anymore,” said Raj, tossing a ghastly pink crop top at them. It had the logo for a long-defunct yogurt company, which seemed on theme: city chaos, ancient and modern mashed together, no one quite certain which bit would wobble next.

Step Two: Leaving the Building is Its Own Parade

At half past eleven, their eclectic crew tumbled into the street. Doris had convinced half the block—people in pajamas, runners still stretching, the mysterious Gavin and his bongo, Megan glittering like a disco ball, and Jamie, hastily safety-pinned into carnival chic. Even Mrs. Dinwiddie from number 18, usually seen only during bin inspections, sported a feathered mask.

Raj pointed his phone skyward. “Group selfie. Say ‘Gentrification’!”

The bus to Notting Hill was packed: adults in tin-foil space suits, children with paper flowers, a man dressed as a traffic cone. Someone’s portable speaker thumped out soca from the upper deck, and a toddler below clanged a saucepan. Megan swatted glitter onto Jamie’s cheek; Raj practiced hu-la dance moves beside two Polish tourists who gamely mimicked him.

At Ladbroke Grove, the bus emptied in a technicolor flood. Carnival had begun: smells of jerk chicken, smoke, rum, crushed petals and sweat surfed on the hot August air. Drums and whistles warred with the ever-present police megaphones. Jamie’s heart galloped. The crowd surged—a tide, beautiful and unyielding. A pram crushed their toe; a stranger handed them a banana with no context.

Step Three: Into the Breach (Costumes Mandatory)

Doris darted into a samba circle, her headdress wobbling with the reckless power of a late-career Elton John. Raj was roped almost instantly into a row of costumed parade marshals, his lion mane fitting right in with the Caribbean carnival troupe. Megan, negotiating with a woman wielding a water pistol, disappeared for promising face paint.

The street: chaos, choreography, and chance. Jamie tried to herd their group—the only strategy was surrender. An enormous man in butterfly wings swept Jamie up, declaring, “You’re part of the Ubuntu Conga now!” They were folded into a shuffling, twisting snake of revelers, steps uncertain but spirit unstoppable.

“Go with it!” hollered Megan, making a peace sign with one hand, glittery drink in the other.

Step Four: The Great London Phone Heist

At precisely 1:17 p.m.—mid-conga—Jamie realized: their phone was gone. Vanished. A moment ago, it had been clutched for dear life (tube directions, group chats, that essential map of vegan toilets). Now: purse, pocket, nothing. Their pockets yielded only festival programs and a single feather.

Panic. Jamie grabbed the nearest butterfly, “Sorry—my phone—think I dropped—”

Instant empathy: the butterfly-man called over his mates, who convened a search party. The Ubuntu Conga splintered; Gavin leapt onto a lamppost, surveying the crowd through plastic shutter-shades. Doris organized a “sweep line” with military precision, barking “advance, advance!” at a trio of bemused tourists. Megan, returning with a day-glo crown on her head, tried Find My iPhone—then realized she’d left her own phone at home, unlocked, beside a perilous mug of tea.

Still, the crowd responded as one: offering up a found phone (Samsung, not Jamie’s, but cheerfully handed over anyway), hugs, even someone’s rain poncho (“You’ll cry, you’ll need this—first London Carnival, innit?”). A tiny girl with a drum lent Jamie her toy plastic phone, solemn as a diplomat, until an adult handed back the actual phone, triumphantly. “Is this yours? Had to dodge three floats and a stilt walker to get it. You’re in the Carnival now!”

Step Five: Mistaken Identity Mayhem

They regrouped outside a chicken shack. Raj, still mistaken for parade staff, had gained a walkie-talkie and a new sense of self-importance. “All clear on Portobello Road!” he announced, saluting a group of bouncers who blinked in confusion.

Meanwhile, Megan intercepted a dance-off between rival samba crews and, with the logic of an aspiring UN ambassador, offered to DJ a compromise playlist featuring both Despacito and Godzilla sound effects. Gavin began beating his bongo while a nearby lemonade vendor chanted, and Jamie was swept up by another family who mistook them for their cousin Phil (“Come on then, Phil, time for the family photo!”).

Somewhere in the blur, Jamie was glitter-bombed by an 8-year-old, Doris led an impromptu polka, Raj learned the hard way why one should not drink homemade rum punch from a stranger’s bucket, and Megan befriended a street medic simply by complimenting her eyebrows.

Step Six: The Empathy of Strangers

As the afternoon sun melted over Notting Hill’s graffiti-splashed walls, a brief rain swept in—instant downpour. The massed crowd at first grumbled. Then, in a peculiarly London transformation, the event turned into a festival of shared umbrellas, huddled laughs, and sudden singing between strangers.

Jamie was lent a rain poncho by a pensioner. Three teens handed over a homemade flag to shield Doris’s wavering headdress. With half the parade sheltering beneath a half-disintegrated tarp and the other half stomping puddles to a reggae beat, Jamie felt something alight in their chest: true, unscripted belonging.

No one was unfeeling or alone: a pair of tourists snapped a group portrait and, on finding Megan’s phone number in a dropped bag, called her ‘Official Carnival Queen, East London,’ prompting Megan to try out her “royal wave.” Gavin shared bongo lessons with an amused seven-year-old. Even the foxes showed up—sort of—a carnival float shaped suspiciously like someone’s back garden bin, attended by kids chanting “Long live the bin bandits!”

Step Seven: Sunset Over Bus Number 23

Evening found them battered, spangled, and sticky-floored, slumped in the upper deck of the Number 23 bus. Costumes drooped; face paint smeared. Laughter echoed, low and tired but unmistakably joyful.

Doris divvied up squashed sausage rolls—vegan for Raj, gluten-free for Jamie (or so she insisted). Megan passed around half-melted chocolate, and Gavin made up a limerick about “bongo diplomacy.” Strangers squeezed in next to them—fellow revelers, feet blistered, tales to swap.

Below, London streamed by: humming, luminous, impossibly vast. Jamie, head tipped to the bus window, watched the last glimmer of sunset split across Wembley’s arch. The city looked back, a prism of lights, wild hope, and mere mortals in face paint and feathers.

“So,” Raj yawned, “think you’ll survive another carnival next year?”

Jamie grinned, tired and heartsore and for once, not lost. “Yeah. I think I could. In fact, I wouldn’t miss it.”

They shared silence—comfortable, necessary. Someone shrieked with laughter downstairs. Out in the city’s teeming veins, another party flickered to life.

Jamie realized, with the certainty of someone who’s finally danced to their own rhythm (however offbeat): Here, messy and miraculous, they’d found their place.

London had become home, and Jamie, part of its endless carnival—the joke, the dance, the glorious belonging.

---