House of Pain – Jump Around – carribean carnival 1989

 

 

Carnival makes entrepreneurs of us all, there is money to be made, so, over the last few days, black bins have been acquired, best not ask from where, chickens and goats curried and jerked, the family next door have been running a samosa assembly line and even the men whose usual day to day rhythm is bookies, bar and blues have plans to make money, cash, dollar and the supermarket has already sold out of bags of ice.

 

The hairdresser has been open since 7am, doors wide open to manage the heat from every hair dryer on high, old school reggae blasting from speakers, a prelude to the sounds that will shake the streets and teeth later.

 

Carnival is serious business, outfits planned for weeks, nails  be-jewelled and dagger sharp, hair sharper still, statement lipsticks and faces that say “ Today I am royalty”

 

The smaller girls are imprisoned between adult knees, clamped into immobility while perfect corn rows are furrowed onto heads, they learn quickly that wriggling is not acceptable, will result in a slap, but as soon as they can, escape to the street, stand close to cooking  pots big enough to swallow a small child whole, learn again that reaching out for dumplin or deep fried plantain will earn them another slap, wait for the call back into the terraced houses, the shoe-horning in perfect frocks, shiny shoes placed on feet, the instruction to sit on the sofa and not move a muscle, not get dirty.

 

The neighbour at number 46 has decamped from the rocking chair that lives outside his front door from April until October, the chair from which he surveys the street, a can of red stripe and a single skinner always on the go, is instead today stacked with bags of whistles, bandanas, baseball caps. Everything is red, gold and green. “ I and I will be making money today “ he says and then because he cannot help himself, opens up one of the bags and hands out whistles to the boys who have been standing, watching his every move for the last half hour.

 

And Chandos St erupts with the first whistles and whoops of the day – soundtrack of carnival, on the parade, on the park and hours from now, as families trail home, hands sticky from candy floss and sugar cane, there will still be enough energy left for a final tuneless toot until children carried on shoulders lose their grip on the now grubby green, red and gold laces and let the last of the whistles drop into the gutter.

 

The parade is late leaving the Neighbourhood Centre, the parade is reliably late leaving but there are still baby mothers running past the supermarket, somehow managing to run and carry a bag stuffed with wet wipes and cartons of smart price juice while perfecting a kiss curl right in the middle of the forehead of the smallest child bound for a float. Hands reach down and hoist these tiny confections of lace and net into their places.

“Smile” say the baby mothers “ Smile” and they walk alongside, newest baby in the buggy, a middle sized boy holding tight to the handle, carrier bags just balanced, just so, one step away from tipping over.

 

And for one day, Highfields becomes a tourist destination for our neighbours from more affluent, less ghetto suburbs. They , thinking they are in the know,  are prowling our streets, looking for carnival colour. They think it’s cheaper and safer to buy food, booze and weed here, in this grid of streets of two ups, two downs than on the park, than at carnival itself, which is mostly true,  but only because no-one here has paid a pitch fee, just plonked a black bin full of ice and cans of beer and those tiny bottles of strange white wine, wine that only ever appears at carnival and everything’s a pound, because, well, why not.

 

We watch them, sell to them, smile and smile and smile. We are serious about providing the colour at this, the  other end of carnival

 

The chickens from number 78 have been a sound investment, not just once, but twice, , first in  fresh laid eggs and now served with rice and beans, soul food eaten with a plastic fork.

 

And this, this tune is everywhere today. Walk slowly, but slightly faster then the floats that stop and stutter up London Rd and you will hear it in full, each sound system out of sync but the music carries on, rewinds, starts again.

“Jump around, jump around”

 

Even the mighty AbaShanti, he of purest roots reggae,  legendary sound system supremo, godfather of the blues parties for half a lifetime, even he lifts one finger, nods, dreads flicking  in time to the beat of these white boys from half a world away.

 

.

 

“Feelin’, funkin’, amps in the trunk and I got more rhymes

Than there’s cops at a Dunkin’ Donuts shop

Sho’ nuff, I got props

From the kids on the hill plus my mom and my pops

I came to get down, I came to get down

So get out your seat and jump around!”

 

James Blunt – Back to Bedlam – 2004

 

 

This is the soundtrack to the summer of 2005, a CD played so often in the ancient 4×4 as it bounces over the country lanes that I have to buy a second copy and then a third. 

 

My daughter listens to music in the same way she watches films, one chosen to be enjoyed again and again, until one day, with no explanation or warning, it is dropped, never to surface again and something else chosen.

 

So this summer is the summer of  endless re-playing of the“Dirty Dancing”  DVD and James Blunt, the comfort of repetition and routine, the comfort of sameness, the comfort of days that drift into each other with little differentiation.

 

Memory is faulty, flawed, unreliable, so, from this distance, it is easy to remember this as a summer of sun and warm breezes and long light nights, but this is summer writing in the same way that stories set in July 1914 are summer writing.

From our place in the now, we know what will happen next, we know the fates of those golden boys and lasses, not yet fallen into the mud of battlefields, not yet fallen into the mud of lives half lived afterwards.

 

So, in the summer of 2005, I am still pretending to myself and perhaps less successfully to others that nothing is wrong, that the child is just a little unusual, a little eccentric, that there is nothing to see here.

We are still years away from the appointments and the assessments and the diagnoses and the mis-diagnoses and the medications and everything else that follows.

 

In the summer of 2005, our normal includes failed playdates and sleepovers, a lack of party invitations and a herd of invisible animals who travel everywhere with us. Cheesy, an invisible mouse “found” in the car park of a shopping centre becomes so real that sometimes I swear that I can see him from the corner of my eye, a tiny blur of grey and brown, our constant companion for months, until one day when, barely holding back tears, you announce that Cheesy has gone, run away, never to be mentioned again.

 

But, the pony is very, very real, Samuel P Whiskers Esq, small, scruffy and shaggy. Ostensibly bought so that you will have a hobby, will have an activity that allows you to spend time with nice children, will give you something of a bargaining tool with all the pony mad girls at school.

Actually, the pony has been bought to allow me to spend more time with the big horse and to be a tangible credit in the reckoning book of parenting.

And the pony is adorable, at least 20 years old, already taught at least one generation of small children to ride, he accepts his fate happily.  Stands for hours while small girls swarm around him, crawl under his belly, decorate him with flowers and tinsel ( dependent on season), paint his hooves with glitter and offer him food he is puzzled by.

 

We ride every day that summer, Big Ruby, behemoth of the hunting field in front, with the pony trotting to keep up. We discover bridleways and field tracks, streams to ford, trespass on land and sneak into the race horse gallops and on his back, you are fearless and this is no small thing for a child scared of almost everything.

 

One day we ride out with friends, all the adults on big hunters, ex-racehorses, you the only child and as we canter up a hill, we all, without speaking hold the horses back, knuckles white from the force it takes, so, that you win, get to the top first and laugh out loud, the day that Samuel P Whiskers Esq beat the racehorses.

 

We sing this song, this actually quite dreadful middle of the road, liked by grandmother’s, a cert for Radio 2 playlists,  with scant attention to tune or lyrics, we sing it on horseback, we sing it in the car, we sing it perched on fences watching the horses engaged in horse stuff.

 

I sing it to you, careful not to touch you, careful not to make eye contact, careful not to overwhelm you with emotions, always careful.

 

And you, you sing it to the pony, croon into his fluffy orange ears, groom him to its rhythm, look directly into his eyes, kiss his nose, tell him how much you love him.

 

Only ever him and the remnants of the army of invisible animals.

 

My life is brilliant

My life is brilliant

My love is pure

I saw an angel

Of that I’m sure

You’re beautiful

You’re beautiful

You’re beautiful, it’s true