This bank holiday weekend is the Notting Hill Carnival. It started really early this morning, so we woke up to the smell of BBQs and the bass from the sound systems.

We headed down with Tom’s brother Jack Waddington, who got really in to the swing of it.

Luckily for me, I managed to grab some veggie food from Veggie Corner. Levi Roots was there again this year, selling jerk chicken. We’ve been watching his awesome cooking show on the BBC. I want to put together my own Sunshine Cooking Kit.

While waiting in the long portaloo queues we befriended Bernard Gallate, a children's book author from Australia.

We then joined a rave in the street where people had set make-shift sound systems up outside their houses.

We made friends with a police horse on the way home.

We watched the parade and admired the feathery outfits.

We headed off to the Notting Hill Carnival again today with Emma and Raven. We had planned to meet up with Lynsey and friends, but it was too crowded and we didn’t have any phone signal.

On the way home the police were blocking off the exits and asking for proof of address, which we didn’t have. We ended up having to walk a very long way home, which took around 2 hours when we only live 10 minutes up the streets. We’re now well and truly carnival-ed out until next year!

We found a sneaky short-cut in to the carnival this time, which meant we didn’t get stuck in huge crowds watching the floats.

We watched some of the parade before escaping to the calm of Bayswater to do some shopping.

It was then time to head down to the Notting Hill Carnival.