well, wowee, take a bow Einstein with all that time and space being relative stuff you did. i appreciate, look you see, that the fair our provincial neighbour have is an annual event, but it really does only feel like a year since we were last there. in real terms, of course, it has in fact only been a few days shy of twelve months that we last attended.
the previous fair exhibition was one we went to on a Saturday. as weekends are about to start getting somewhat busier than usual for me, i elected to whisk the family off to the joys of experiencing it all on a night. a fair is, after all, much better and feels more natural on an evening. also, as it happens, it makes pictures seem darker, so there you go, a warning in advance on the quality of what you shall see.
that there above must be one of the biggest, if not most massive, transportable or if you like mobile fun house things that i have ever seen. smart it looked, and indeed smart it was, the boys assured me.
as befits the status of something so absolutely massive, going on this was not a cheap venture. £2.50 a go was the price commanded, and for that you could only go around it once. by means of comparison, other fun houses - ones not so massive - normally charge just south of that at £2 a go, and let the kids go around at least twice.
better value, and of equal fun, was this absolutely massive slide. sorry, this is a bit of a lengthy video, so if you are on a mobile device make sure you've got battery and that you have a data package in place. well, when i say lengthy, 14 seconds or so i think. but long by the standards of video here.
the ostensible costing for this, something that i would like to think i would have gone on myself but probably would have been too scared to in my youth, was £2 a child for 5 goes. the chap running it, however, was a gent, and said he didn't mind if the kids had another extra couple of goes. as it was both fun for them and kept them occupied for quite some time, i could have happily invested our budget there. but, alas, we didn't.
onwards then, as was the case last year i think you will find if you search for previous posts, to the Mission To Mars rocket. except it wasn't a Mission To Mars, apparently, as much as it was some sort of rollercoaster ride film on the go in it. i didn't get to have a go; instead my (considerably) better half and young William went for a ride on it.
costing? £2 each for an 8 - 10 minute ride, which is fair enough for what you get. and should it be the case for some reason that you want a small snippet of this rocket in action (from the outside, since i wasn't in it), here you got, that's what you get next.
i probably would rather enjoy a go in this one, to be honest, but it all looks rather small for a gent of my size to be getting in to. perhaps one day i will find one that has a sign on it saying "big b@stards welcome" and i shall have a go. perhaps.
onwards further, then, and time for some fancy shooting.
it is pretty much what it looks like, dear reader. these are rudimentary air cannon things, made no doubt with some smart and professionally bent metal, powered by gas or something or other in order that they may fire mostly spongy tennis ball sized balls at people who are willing to enter into the battle arena.
a video of these things in action? sure, kind of. unfortunately i only considered, or had chance, to start filming towards the end of the session the boys had, but here is what i got.
costing? £2 a go, and for that the boys got to fire at least a couple of dozen of the spongy balls at each other. i happened to get hit by one of them as i tried to assist William in gaining ammunition and i can assure you that the goggles are wise, as that ball does knack and really smarts when it hits you.
this is the kind of thing i would love to have a go on with Spiros. we could have literally minutes of fun playing with this, with one of us pretending to be a blonde model that's masquerading as a big black man in a bathroom, whereas the other gets down on their knees, acts like a real hard man, firing away, only to start crying and feeling sorry for themselves when they realise that, in the real world, actions generally have consequences that bear relation to the nature of the actions.
food is of course a major element of any carnival themed fun fair. just as Scooby Doo or Shaggy to confirm that, although they may moan a bit about the ghost impostor they were required to chase away first before they could access food. no chasing ghosts for us, instead it was just straight cash.
here is the pricing that we were honoured to experience at the fair :
reconstituted and refried chips (modest tray) - £2
tepid Maxwell House coffee out of a tin - £1
tepid Maxwell House cappuccino out of a tin - £2
candy floss (bag) - £2
plastic sword with a gesture of jelly beans in it - £3
the fluctuating nature of pricing at a carnival type of fair thing is such that in all likelihood the present costs are now significantly north of what i have listed above.
back to the attractions, then, and onwards to a minor version of the major fun house.
that is indeed James you can see in that picture, if you can see him up at the top. he had a go on this whilst William had many, many goes on a helter skelter with associated school friends who just happened to be at the fair too.
costing of this one? £2 for two goes around, although this was something that James somehow managed to convert into three. as i said to him at the time, his Grandad will be very pleased indeed to learn this.
as with the other massive mega fun house, this one ends, or if you like culminates, with one of them twisty slide things. video? video.
both boys, as indeed all of the kids there, did seem to love these fun house things. they do seem rather smart. if i were to get my life all over again, knowing then what i know now, i believe i would have loved a life of driving one of these things around, gaining some sort of living off of letting the kids run around on it for a modest fee whilst i sat in a rudimentary booth reading a leaning to the right in nature newspaper.
beyond that, we did indeed pass a significant number of people, predominantly ladies, that offered their services of fortune telling and to act as soothsayers. James asked what they were and what they did, so i told him, as objectively as i could, that they claim to be able to, via various means, see what the future holds for people who employ them.
the conclusion James had of this was that it was "stupid" as "no one can see into the future". i said that this was in all likelihood the case, but if some people get some value or reassurance from the experience and they are willing to pay for it then there is no harm in it. i, for one, sometimes if not often would like some sort of reassurance or other about who i am, what i'd doing and where i am going.
finally, then, the magic of the roundabout.
yes, indeed the pricing was £2 a go, and it went around enough times to make the pair of them feel sufficiently dizzy. and dizzy is precisely what you can feel, if not sense, by watching this classy video i made of them going around a couple of times.
roundabouts are indeed smart, and i would very much appreciate it if they made them of a nature that us larger sized grown ups could have a go on. i would think it quite smart, to be honest, to sit in a classy looking Batmobile, going round and round, smoking and watching the world go buy in a strangely circular way.
a last "in action" image of them going around? sure, why not?
if you can make out the sense of a smile off of William there you are quite correct to identify that. as hopefully some of these videos and pictures have shown, both of them had huge smiles after all that they did. any queries or questions that i might have about certain pricing strategies in place are pretty irrelevant in the light of that.
and so, that's that until the next fair, which may be in a year or so, i suppose.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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