Here's the thing that surprised me the most about living in Notting Hill: you had the richest people and poorest living right next door to each other. The first time I moved into the area, was only because I was able to get a rental place in a council block (or housing commission as we call it here in Australia).
The owner of the council flat renovated it and put the place up for rent. I shared the flat with four other people and one day on my way to work I saw a certain well-known personality walking her dog in the small park next to my building, while her chauffeur waited for her in a limo.
This became one of the things I loved about London — that the poor and rich lived side by side. But over the years it also highlighted to me how an area with traditionally working class roots and a proud multicultural heritage was becoming increasingly gentrified, its former inhabitants becoming marginalised and pushed out to the edges.
When the Grenfell Tower fire occurred, it laid bare the growing frustrations and unease that many poorer people in the area have been feeling for generations. Notting Hill, and its surrounding suburbs such as North Kensington and Ladbroke Grove, have been home to the Afro-Caribbean community since World War II. In 1958 this area was where Britain's first race riots occurred.
The Notting Hill Carnival, which still happens every year in August, began as a response to those riots. The carnival is now one of the biggest street festivals outside of Rio — although even this is now under threat with growing calls for it to be scaled down or even moved out of the area altogether.
When I went back to visit London earlier this year, I naturally stayed in the area I had called home for close to a decade. I rented an Airbnb that was in a council building, because that's where I was most comfortable, and again because I couldn't afford to stay in the area otherwise.
By that time, along with the Afro-Carribbean community there were increasing numbers of immigrants from many different cultures. My neighbours were Somalian, and several families from Syria were staying in the same council block. When we went for walks around the neighbourhood the familiar Grenfell building would stand tall and proud in the distance — albeit slightly less conspicuous than I