On Saturday night, there was a funfair in Donnington, near where I work. Now I think funfairs are a bit of an oddity. They seem to attract such a wide scope of people, from the blue rinse brigade, to the young families, right the way to the aggressive looking youths, having a crafty can of Strongbow behind the burger van.
Anyway, not having been to a fair for years, we decided that it might be a bit of fun to go. Plus it was a great opportunity for me to take my camera and get some great low light shots. Fireworks, spinny things, and the chance to win amazing amounts of tat. What more could I want?
After ditching the car on the outskirts of the sprawling masses of people making their way in to the fair, we joined the crowds and were transported into a field full of more flashing lights and soft toys than I thought is humanly possible to contain in one place.
Now I’m not one for rides, being as I am, a chicken, and genuinely scared of heights. I’m genuinely scared of aggressive youths too, but of the two, I feel it would be easier to run away from a youth, rather than a million miles an hour ride I’m strapped into. So I found some quiet-ish spots and set my camera up. You can see the results at my Flickr account.
We also had a go at a few of the games there, and I wanted to win a big teddy for Clare. This I failed to do with any of the games I tried, ranging from hooking a gift bag, to flipping frogs, to darts. I felt a bit hard done by when I realised at the darts that I needed to score over 64 for the best prize, but doubles and trebles don’t count. Slightly difficult, I think you’d agree, especially when you think that the largest number is 20, and you only have three darts. Not that I’m paranoid about carnival games, oh no.
The one bright shining success came courteous of Clare, of course. These things are never anything to do with me; I’m full of shining and sparkly enthusiasm, mixed with very little skill or success. Clare stepped calmly up to the Hook a Duck stall, and with next to no effort, slyly flipped a small plastic duck onto her pole, and hey presto, we’d won a prize. Clare got her choice of prize, and I later found out she’d rejected the chance to own a plastic sword. No, no plastic sword for me to look all manly with, she opted instead for a goldfish. Not a plastic one, a real life one. In a bag. Handily though, there were instructions on the bag for how not to kill your newly acquired goldfish. Ace. To be honest though, I could pretty much work out for myself that for the best chance of survival it’s best “not to keep it in a bag”. Hmmm. Fret not though, we got him into a nice clean and spacious bowl shortly after getting him home. We’re off to Ikea to get him some modern storage next weekend.
Here’s little Pudge, shortly before being transferred out of his temporary accomodation.
The other main game we played was called “21″. You pay for a number of slips, all with numbers on them, and you have to get the correct ones to add up to 21. Easy. You can keep all the slips you buy, until you manage to get 21. Even easier. The only difficulty was that the bloke only ever seemed to give out odd numbers once in a blue moon. You try making 21 with no odd numbers; it’s not that easy…. And no, you couldn’t turn the 6 upside down, I tried.
So, after numerous mostly failed attempts to be successful at games (this is all subjective of course, the people actually running the games were very successful), we decided to wind our way home. We didn’t literally wind of course, that’s near enough impossible in a Rover 214. Considering I had woken up 90 miles from home that morning, and watched a rugby games in the afternoon, I felt I was quite good to motivate myself to get up and out for a fair in the late evening. I am so glad I did though. Maybe I’ll go on a ride next time, although given the speed that some of them go, maybe not….
Nov 162006
