Dutty Wine

 

I’ve been meaning to get this necklace for ages! It's from Omolola Jewellery and it is glorious!

Pre the global pyramid, right about now, I'd have been umming and ahhing about going to Carnival on the Bank Holiday. The first Caribbean Carnival was established by the epic Claudia Jones to celebrate West Indians in London. The same people who had been invited to the U.K. as British Citizens to rebuild the decimated country after it had been bombed to dust. They came with scotch bonnets. With plantain. With spices and seasoning and music and style and culture! Imagine leaving the balmy warmth of the Caribbean to come to cold rainy racist England and not even have the food you like? Yikes. At the very least, they had one another and thought, "We're fucking amazing! Let’s have a street party! No let’s make it a carnival! A carnival like the way we would back home! Embrace how fucking amazing we actually are!" (Watch Steve McQueen's Small Axe series!)

Notting Hill Carnival was thus born in West London and before Richard Curtis got his sticky fingers in the area, it was very much (like most of ‘urban’ London) where you went to party, to hear those steel pans, to smell the jerk oil drum smoke, chew on some sugar cane, jump and wave to dancehall, to eat and drink, to feel the joy of a culture that has tsunami’d across the world. Where else would John Boyega “catch wines”?!? 

And it was always basically on my doorstep! But then… We all got a bit of Carnival fatigue. The weather would never be good enough. There would always be too many people and you would never find your friends where you’d say you’d meet. The food began to be ever more expensive and the police presence more oppressive. Reality tv stars would go for street cred (I saw Proudlock from Made In Chelsea one year and told myself not to go any more!) And yet, on a Monday afternoon, I’d find myself on the tube, shuffling behind people in Jamaican flag print dresses, with whistles around their necks and vuvuzelas blasting at the tube platform to join my fellow carnival goers. 

No one would ever assume that I’m anything other than very African, so I would feel free to wear prints, huge Ghana flag earrings, paint a Black star on my wrist as a symbol of my patriotism to my motherland and found myself even more embraced by my West Indian family. You can’t tell me that doing “tunderclap!” simultaneously with fifty other people isn’t anything other than exhilarating!

I’m truly going to miss it again this year, probably more than last year because we’ve had a taste of freedom. It’s too great of an open air festival to risk apparently (didn’t stop masses from gathering during England’s World Cup run but let’s not talk about that disgraceful episode). 

So for a variety of reasons, one being bad ass from For The Last Time Paris Amihere and her outline tattoo of Ghana and the other being I couldn’t find any Ghana flag earrings, I bought this necklace. That way I keep the spirit of carnival as close as Ghana to my heart. 

Carnival 2022 will be a madness and I can’t wait! 

Happy Bank Holiday!!