fourth fair

heya


and so that time has been once more, look you see. no doubt it shall come again, but for now let us reflect on that which has happened. what i speak of is the annual event called Stokesley Fair, reeling around as it does in celebration of the, well, celebrated Stokesley Show.

this is all, as usual, really just for friends and family around the world to see what we are up to, and indeed how the boys are getting on. but, then again, if you're now in a different corner of the world and have found this whilst doing a reminiscing search for the fair, welcome!

here we are, then, at the start of the fair. in every sense i guess. from this point down the main road through Stokesley is closed for the duration of the fair. we were also there for opening night. traditionally, or if you like usually, this first night sees the rides be the cheapest, and there's a sort of tacit, unspoken agreement that this evening is when families come along, leaving the other nights to all others.

i would suspect that the title tells you as much, but all the same this was then the fourth instance of the boys attending Stokesley Fair since we moved home. for my (considerably) better half it was the fifth, and for me, well, i have been more times that i think i would care to count!
 

a decided and declared favourite of the boys at Stokesley Fair - and any other such fair styled concern we may visit - would be the "fun house" or "house of fun" style attractions. except not in the way what Madness sang of, thank you. 

how much does a ride, or if you like go on an attraction, cost at Stokesley Fair these days? famously the pricing tends to increase as the week progresses, with the Friday and Saturday being the most expensive. which will be interesting. here on the Wednesday prices were around £2.50 or £3 flat a go. the bumper cars (see below) were a quite reasonable £3 for 2 in 1 car, as it happens.

i didn't think the pricing of the rides was overtly extortionate, but my Dad did as i messaged him from the fair. he spoke of rides being a very small number of shillings when he was a lad that went there. gone are the days, i would speculate. although, you never know - post Brexit there really isn't going to be any need for us to retain the ways of decimal money, i guess.

yes, my (considerably) better half and i, taking one of them selfie things as we awaited the boys to complete their adventures on one fun house thing or another. i know you would prefer to have no pictures of me on here, so just concentrate on the other person in the above.

whilst the price of rides and attractions was not entirely unreasonable the dining facilities on offer were perhaps not so much this. although i accept that all of us need to make a living, £2.50 for a gesture of a handful of frozen chips quickly fried did strike me as potentially somewhat exorbitant. but, you know, in the spirit of the carnival atmosphere i did not complain or cry too much. ok, maybe slightly too much, but still.

Diddycoys is what my Dad says that Gramps used to call the touring operators and proprietors of the fair. he also apparently said, and i can hear his voice in this, that they "could strip out a field of potatoes without disturbing the green tops".  whereas i didn't see any such dishonest behaviour myself, perhaps it happens in isolated incidents. i think that when people think of carnival workers they think of the stealing, conning and sexual assaulting ways of Ringo Starr and David Essex in the film That'll Be The Day. sometimes reputations stick to things.

but, back to pleasanter things, really. above sees the boys in an image of their second most favourite thing at any sort of fair or carnival event - the big massive "bouncy slide". this is awesome. somewhere a genius decided to add together the magic of a slide with the wonder of a bouncy castle.

hopefully you are looking at this on a platform or device what allows for video to be played, for surely some video clips are now to come. to start off with here's James on the bouncy slide.

and of course, for good measure, here is one of the times William came belting down it.

some of the boys' friends were at the fair too. quite a few, actually, accompanied by one or more parents and other such family members. a number of parents looked in wonder at the ways in which James and William elected to come down the slide, but also instructed their children not to do the same. which is fair enough.

with the old favourites seen to it was time for the boys to try something new. this next one is one that they didn't look twice at, but i suggested that they give it a go. as far as i am aware this is then one of those happy incidents where the boys were quite glad of the advice of their Dad. 

yes, some sort of rounder bumper cars. actually they look like "hover bumper" cars but i am quite sure that they have wheels underneath. in essence i believe they are variations of bumper cars intended for the younger members at attendance at the fair. younger than James, perhaps, for as you might see he could not quite fit into it.

and yet the boys both declared this one to be quite spectacular fun. this you can see, should technology allow, in the below video of them in action on this particular attraction. 

it was after a hugely satisfactory and very successful go on those rounder, well protected bumper cars that the boys declared it was time to try the "real deal", so to speak. yes, full on proper bumper cars, or "dodgems" as i gather they are called from time to time.

no, i have no idea how i managed to get that photo either, but it is quite good, isn't it? i have often wondered how them photographers manage to get an image of someone in focus with everything else blurred. my experience is, then, that the answer to such wonder is luck.

you can quite clearly see me not in one of the bumper cars. William and my (considerably) better half took the controls of one, whilst James was in the other. i suspected that my size was of a nature too large to be comfortable in one. and anyway, riding in one and getting smacked about would probably have done my spine no favours at all.

of course there is some video of them on the bumper cars. it's also the last video on this blog post, so i do hope you can watch and further hope you enjoy!

going on the bumper cars is one of the more ambitious things the boys have done at any fair we have been too. they have always looked wary, or simply not interested, in the more thrillseeking and potentially dangerous sort of ones. these things change over time.

i suspect it shall all change for James sooner rather than later. he's getting older, to be sure. perhaps as soon as next year it won't be us as a family go to the fair as much as it will be we drop him off with his mates and keep a distance so as to not "cramp his style".

to this end, he very nearly expressed an interest on going on this particular ride. 

yeah, that's one of them relatively safe things where you are raised to a great height and then dropped with rapid speed, ostensibly with it being unlikely that harm befalls you. but it feels like it shall. how strange that they have called it Vertigo. if i was going to name a fairground or carnival ride in honour of U2 then i am not certain that i would select that particular song.

no, James did not go on this ride. at least not this time, despite me offering to pay. as mentioned above, i have little doubt that next year him and his gang of mates will be piling on to this one and similar.

with it being likely that next year James wanting to be at the fair but not with his family like some sort of totes dorky nerd i thought that this year i'd best get a family selfie, then.

whilst i know you appreciate the 75% of that picture which doesn't feature me thank you for being tolerante. i feature in just the one more image, towards the end, so you have been warned.

summer would be pretty much over, then. that's normally what the coming of Stokesley Fair signifies. as you can see in the above, and the pictures to follow, the sky was getting quite dark. and this was all at around 7pm, where we had been enjoying sunlight until 10pm and beyond. just now, around the end of October and in particular when the clocks change, our world shall be in darkness for most of the time.

 

what reason is the above picture featured? no particular reason, i suppose. if for some reason you wanted to see what my (considerably) better half looked like stood in front of a vehicle normally used by the constabulary, there you go.

outside of the rides the boys took to some games of chance. invariably these offered one the chance to win an item that would cost £1 off of Poundland for a fee of up to 300% of that price. the "hook a duck" stalls in particular were, if this is the correct word, guilty of this, as they charged £3 a go. some of them, however, were fun to play.

like this one above. on this one you had to climb the rope ladder and ring the bell to win £10, with the trick being that you could not fall off of it on your way. as you got 3 attempts for an entry fee of just £1, that was not bad at all. but no the boys did not win.

oh, look, a branch of them lovely people at Santander is behind this particular funfair attraction. since it has come up, i would like to thank all of you for the support and kind words of encouragement relating to this blog post that i did. the more i have learned of their ways of treating clients and the contempt they have for staff then the more i am aware of how lucky i am they let me walk out of their doors, no matter how much i could have brought. off life goes.

and of course life went on, in a circular way, to end the evening more or less as we started. to the extent, at least, that the boys had a go on another of them fun house type of attractions. this one cost £2.50, with this allowing the boys to go around it twice or, in the words of the proprietor of the ride, "three times if i am not looking", with those words delivered with a wink and a smile. nice one fella, cheers.

to the end, then, and i for some reason really, really wanted a selfie with my (considerably) better half that featured the lights of the fair in the background. why? no idea. perhaps to capture the buzz, the atmosphere, the vibrancy and all that good stuff. well, anyway, here it is.

so there we have it, or if you like there you have it. another wonderful evening out at a most fantastic and treasured annual event. we can get through the darkness and the cold of the winter ahead knowing that the sun shall come back, and that when it does we can do all this sort of thing again.

many thanks as ever for reading!




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!