“The art is not in making money, but in keeping it” Proverb

This is turning out to be one incredible year. We are on average receiving bookings at about 5 times the rate of last year which is brilliant. We are seeing large amounts of repeat business which is brilliant. We are working with loads of events companies and wedding planners which is brilliant. We have an unbelievable amount of paperwork to work through which is bloody awful, as I do the bulk of it.

One thing which really annoys me is chasing payments up from companies which have the resources to pay us on time without any problems. I can accept that sometimes smaller companies or individuals need to hang on to their cash reserves as they are constantly juggling things around, but when national or multinational companies occupy hours of my time chasing up overdue accounts it makes my blood boil. One example was a client we worked for in March, which happened to be part of a major chain of BMW/MINI dealerships. Whilst negotiating the equipment they wanted us to supply our emails were answered within minutes. Once the job was complete our emails were met with a resounding silence. Eventually I sent a final demand by post with the declaration that after 7 days we would be filing a claim with the court services. This produced a result, a rather snotty member of the administration team phoned me to request a copy of the invoice, he seemed rather put out at my temerity in threatening legal action. After sending an invoice again and waiting another fortnight, I filed a claim with Her Majesty's online money claims service. This was done on a Monday morning. The court will have delivered a copy of my claim to the dealership on Tuesday, and lo and behold, on Wednesday I received my cheque for the outstanding amount plus court costs.

Now the fact that they did not contest this meant that they accepted they owed me this money. The fact that they paid it instantly under threat of litigation meant that they could afford to pay it to me. So why did it take 3 months and a court claim to actually get it. Obviously they won't ever use me again as I began court proceedings against them, and obviously I would not ever work for them again as you have to sue them to get paid, so why did things reach that point?

I have to say the online courts service is brilliant, I have used it 4 times this year to good effect each time, and now we have altered our accounts systems so that we use it sooner rather than later.

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I have negelected this blog a little this month, not deliberately, but simply due to the schedule of work. In the last couple of weeks we have been to Durham (5 times), Liverpool, Lincoln, Leeds (3 times), Manchester, Stoke, Glasgow (twice), Cornwall (twice), Newmarket, West Bromwich, Birmingham, Cambridge, Tamworth, Luton, Yeovil, Stoke, Colne, Stockton, Gainsborough, Wakefield and London (twice).

In fact in June we have some 40 odd events, with only 2 of the days on the calander that don't contain an event. Most of these have run smoothly, but we had a little trouble on the way back from the second Cornwall trip, which once again demonstrated the mutual support network that is in place amongst the fairground community. During the ride home a tyre valve on the van began to leak and we had to make ever more frequent stops to re inflate it. Eventually we were forced to pull over on the hard shoulder to change the bloody thing. The van (a modern transit) had a jack handle that unfolded a number of times until it was about 8 ft in length. Unfortunately the extra leverage from this length meant that I managed to snap it in half, with the result that the back wheel wasn't high enough to change, but was far eough off the ground to leave me stranded, with no tools to try and lower the jack back down. Eventually I managed to hammer some chocks under the errant wheel, which gave me enough grip to drive off the jack.

We were now faced with the prospect of paying a tyre fitter an extortianate rate to change a wheel for us. Just as I picked the phone up to call Dick Turpin out, my wife pointed out what appeared to be fairground vehicles, in the distance across the fields at the side of the M5 motorway. I rang my mate William, who was a native of these parts and gave him details of where I was. Luckily he knew the yards I could see and told me who the residents would be, one of which happened to have a daughter married to an operator in my native North East who attends occasional events with us, small world.

We drove into the yard and within ten minutes had the spare wheel fitted and were on our way home, loverly jubberly.

After writing this short piece, I will probably be silent again for a while as the second half of this month will see us in Twickenham, Oxford, Exeter, Yarm, London (3 times), Cambridge, Grantham, Kingswood, Nottingham, Durham, Kimbolton and Manchester!

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multiCART A New Concept In Catering Carts

We are having to continually expand to keep pace with the bookings for our catering carts, usually from one of the many event management companies we have formed close working relationships with. With the large selection of fun foods we are offering, we are picking up a fabulous amount of bookings for our carts. There is however one market we haven't penetrated to the same degree, our carts are designed in most cases for high volume servings, usually 300 people upover. We receive regular enquiries from people organising small private parties, dinner events and the like. usually for anything from 20 to 100 people. In these cases our carts can prove a little expensive, especially if the client fancies two or three different products. To better serve this market we have been trialling a new flexible cart system we have christened multiCART.

We have trialled the multiCART system at around 30 events this season and it has proven a resounding success. It works on quite a simple principle, instead of our standard candy floss cart with unlimited servings, and say a hot dog cart with 300 servings, you can hire a multiCART 300, this gives the client two items on the same cart with 150 servings of each (in actual fact the system is flexible enough to make it say 200 hot dogs and 100 candy floss, or any combination upto 300 in total). The best part is the price, we can offer this at the same price as one of our standard candy floss carts. The multiCART is available in various offerings with 300,500,700 servings. The bigger packages allow you to pick an additional item, giving a total of three different products on a combined cart. We have proven the concept at, amongst others, dinner parties, small birthday parties, bar mitzvahs and wedding receptions.



We believe that this system, along with our standard range of carts and the new microCART designed for venues with limited space, gives us one of the broadest offerings of fun catering carts in the UK.

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“The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step.” Lao Tzu

Over the last 4 days we have racked up just short of 1500 miles. We started with a trip down to Cornwall to deliver a humber of attractions that are going out on medium term hire to a tourist attraction. We arrived home late Friday evening, then Saturday morning were up for one of our many trips to the capital, this time with a candy floss and popcorn cart to a major film studio for an after film "wrap" party. We finished it off on Sunday by taking ice cream, popcorn and candy floss carts through to a venue in Cheshire for a wedding reception. A friend of mine, Cornelius , was already there having set up a carousel the day before. He was talking to the venue owner when I arrived, as I walked up the owner looked at me then asked Cornelius if I was his son! LOL, the ironic thing is I think he is actually younger than me, he must have had a tougher paper round than me.

Our new range of microCARTS finally received their top frames and one of them was in operation at the event, (pictured below);



I now have a couple of days breathing space, then we are in operation at Sunderland, Newcastle, Richmond, Cornwall, Leeds, Preston and Liverpool all before the end of the week.

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If you are an event planner, wedding planner of someone who has just been tasked with planning an event you should know that choosing the right caterers can make or break your event. Sub standard catering can, at best, leave your client unimpressed, at worst leave him off work with food poisoning. A quick search on Google will leave you with a bewildering list of potential catering companies, so how can you go about minimising the chances of using a caterer who just isn't up to the job?

A traditional method of checking a caterer out is to ask for references. You are quite entitled to do this, and if your caterer objects, then strike him off your list. Once you have a reference, its no good just putting it to one side, contact the named referee and ask for details of work carried out for them by your prospective caterer. Its work asking at this point just what sort of events have been catered for, there is little point in appointing a catering company who specialise in small dinner parties for a couple of dozen people if you are trying to feed 2000 delegates at a major conference.

Once you have whittled your list down to a select few, the next item on your agenda should be health and hygiene. A company may be able to provide the most mouth watering menu imaginable, but if their hygiene is suspect it can still ruin both your event and your reputation, not to mention losing a valuable client.

It is a requirement of most local authorities that catering staff should all hold at the very least a basic or level 2 hygiene certificate. Again any reputable company should be more than willing to furnish you with copies of these certificates for all of their staff. The company itself should have been checked out by their local health department and records of this inspection should be available. Many councils are part of the scores on doors scheme, whereby each catering business is inspected and graded from 0 to 5 stars (some councils use a similar scheme which have unsatisfactory, satisfactory and excellent rather than stars). An initial impression may be that 4 stars (or satisfactory) is quite good. The fact is that you can score 4 stars and have upto 3 failings with your hygiene procedures, so anything less than 5 or excellent indicates a company that is less than fully hygienic.

When there is a vast choice of 5 star caterers to choose from why settle for sub standard operators?

Once you have selected a caterer you are comfortable with its time to choose a menu. This has to be a balance between what your clients would like, and what your caterer can realistically provide. Don't forget that serving 2000 guests simultaneously isn't as easy as providing meals for a family of 4 on a Sunday lunchtime.

Its worth involving your client with menu selection, as ultimately they are the people you are trying to please. If you are planning a conference for Asian or Caribbean delegates, they may not appreciate pie and peas all round.

You should also have something in place for those delegates who for religious or other reasons cannot eat your main choice, the most obvious are vegetarians, but you may have gluten intolerant guests or people who have trouble with lactose products. Also some food items such as seafood or peanuts can have severe consequences for people with allergies.

You would be as well taking heed of your caterers comments at this point, he/she will know what can and cannot be done in the timescale you have, and demanding totally unrealistic service will leave your caterer stressed out and you with a client unimpressed with the final result.

A little forward planning and common sense can result in a successful event that does wonders for your reputation, and leaves you with a highly delighted client.

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A few days ago, at just after 6 in the morning, my phone rang. It turned out to be my Mother in Law telling me that their alsation dog had died through the night and would I bury him, just what I wanted to do first thing in the morning. Anyway I got dressed and went round, found my gloves, the hole was dug and I approached the dog box to retrieve the body. A leg was sticking out of the side of the box, and I thought "Great, the dog is going to be as stiff as a board and I'll struggle to get him out the bloody box". I bent down and stuck my head in the box to assess the situation, when the bloody dog sat up and looked me straight in the eye! Lucky he did for another few minutes would have seen him buried alive. My Mother in Law exclaimed that she had checked him twice and he wasn't moving, God help my Father in Law if he falls asleep at the wrong time, we'll be digging a bigger hole.

Anyway, it turned out to be a temporary reprieve, I buried the dog for real two days later.

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Health & Safety Indian Style

Take a look at the clip below;


Isn't that great, imagine the look on the faces of the Health and Safety Gestapo in this country if you tried something like that. Although you could argue that it is helping save the environment.

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The New Stockton On Tees Spring Festival

Work has recently been completed on the new Infinity footbridge in Stockton Upon Tees. The bridge will be officially opened on 14th May in conjunction with the new Stockton Infinity Spring Festival. A new date in Stockton's calender of festival events. We presented a Christmas fair in the town last November, and we have just been asked to provide a funfair and a number of catering units in conjunction with the festival.

A flyer can be downloaded from here, and the festival website is located here.

The bridge itself is a stunning piece of architecture which has already been shortlisted for a number of awards.



Its also another major new event that we have added to our portfolio. We have a number of others that we can announce as soon as we are cleared to do so, and although the corporate side of things has become our main business, we intend to extend our portfolio of traditional funfair events over the next few years.

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I'm still a little drowsy sat here writing this due to returning from an event in Slough around 5 this morning (a bit like buses coming all at once, that was our second Slough event in under a week), anyway I have just found out that at an upcoming event, not one we are in charge of, the local constabulary have asked for a number of free ride tickets. Now this is not in itself an unusual occurrence, free ride tickets are regularly dispensed to various deserving groups. The "deserving group" in this affair, happen to be the local yob element. Basically if you are someone who likes to mug old ladies, or break into other peoples homes, and you promise to be good for a week, you will be "rewarded" by being given tickets to go to the fair for free. If you are a law abiding youth, who perhaps comes from a disadvantaged family, you probably won't be able to afford to go to the fair, so it's tough.

My advice would be to mug the next old person you see (person rather than little old lady, see we are now politically correct), or perhaps go and smash someones windows, then when you are arrested (although to be fair you would probably get arrested quicker parking on double yellow lines), you can promise to be good and go to the fair for free.

Personally I think flogging those who don't behave and rewarding those who do would be a better system.

Last Wednesday I spent with Arthur's wife, Lisa, finishing off a first aid course (we should all be trained up pretty soon), my other half was at an event near London, and Arthur was in Derby providing attractions to a company pitching for 8 family fundays, if we get the job it should provide an interesting logistics challenge as they are all on the same weekend! Anyway the course was run very professionally, but in a lighthearted way which made it enjoyable. We learnt a lot of stuff which could possibly save someones life so its well worth while. During one exercise we were shown an image of an injury victim and had to state the required treatment, I happened to draw an image of a rather attractive young lady who had fallen down a flight of stairs cutting her leg. My recommended course of treatment, immediate application of vigorous mouth to mouth resuscitation, met with a stern look from the instructor and a whack across the back of the head from Lisa, but I think that you cannot be too careful with injuries and she may have developed breathing difficulties.

We should very shortly be able to announce two new events in our portfolio of traditional funfairs, one is entirely our own affair, the other a joint venture under the Universal Funfairs brand we established with a Yorkshire operator for an event last season.

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I read a news report this morning about a Polish registered car travelling the wrong way up a motorway, colliding with a Jaguar going in the correct direction and causing the death of 5 people. This isn't an isolated incident, about 3 years ago I was doing some agency driving in the winter months, when out of the early morning gloom on the A1M, a foreign registered lorry came hurtling towards me, luckily being early morning the road was pretty empty and there was plenty of room for evasive action. Unfortunately with the relaxation of cabotage rules, and the disparity in fuel prices between here and the continent making it profitable for european lorries to ply their trade over here, this isn't going to get better any time soon. Especially when you take into account the fact that fines for driving offenses are pretty much disregarded once the offended leaves these shores, and it is too much time and trouble to try and chase them for payment.

Its not just major offenses, but a vast multitude of minor ones as well, you drive a HGV about with no number plate on for any length of time and you are pretty sure to receive a fine for your crime. Yet you take note of just how many non British registered vehicles are tramping up and down the highways and byways of this nation without plates on their trailers, or quite often with different plates to the towing vehicle. They are pretty much disregarded by traffic officers, as they know the fixed penalty they issue will be ripped up once they are out of sight. Contrast this to the French system, where offenders are marched to the nearest cash point to withdraw the money for the fine. No doubt if we implement this system it will breach someones human rights.

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With most of the reports coming in from the early season funfairs being favourable, it was with renewed optimism that everyone was looking forward to Easter, especially as the same holiday last year was wiped out by dreadful weather. Unfortunately as it has turned out, the bulk of the Easter fairs have seen a fairly poor level of business, so perhaps the credit crunch is having an effect after all.

We haven't bothered with any traditional funfairs this Easter, simply because of our corporate event commitments. Starting on 5th April we were in London that day (Sunday), London Monday, London Tuesday and London Wednesday, Chelmsford (about 20 miles form London) Thursday. We then theoretically had 2 days off before Easter Sunday when we were due to attend events in Blackburn and Cambridge. On Thursday evening I was contacted to provide an additional candy floss cart to an event in London (yet again). I tried to lay this event off simply because we were already spread pretty thin. Unfortunately I couldn't find another operator to take the event on so I had to do it myself. Problem was we didn't have a spare cart available (with 7 carts I expected to be able to meet all of our commitments, but I was proved wrong). This resulted in my 2 days off being spent building a new mini cart just to house one of our candy floss machines, the client told me that the room we were in had a low ceiling so I didn't get bother taking the roof to the cart with me (although once there it was apparent that there was adequate headroom), anyway I managed to build the basic cart, spray it and add some decoration in time for the event. This new cart is designed to fit into the rear of a small hatchback car we use occasionally, and is really only designed to accommodate a single item (candy floss, popcorn, ice cream etc). By the end of next week I should have managed to finish the decoration and final fitments and the cart can be added to our standard line up.



As it turned out the London job was quite pleasant, with me arriving back home about half eight this evening. As a bonus, the client turned out to have a very successful Asian wedding planning business and it looks like that one job has turned into a number of bookings, just goes to show that our original motto of try everything is still valid.

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A finger is worth £30,000, 2 lives a mere £10,000

I noticed 2 items in the news recently. In one a man whose negligence led to the death of 2 people and the serious injury of a young child, was fined £10,000. In another, a company where an employee lost one of his fingers in an accident was fined £30,000, with the Health and Safety Executive declaring that "If a proper risk assessment had been carried out, this would never had happened!". To add further to the case, Maurice Agis, the so called "Artist" who had created the structure, has in the past created similar items that have done exactly the same thing, not once but twice previously. So how on earth does the loss of a finger result in a £30K fine and the deaths of 2 people in a mere £10K. I admit that I am quite attached to my own fingers, and would be rightly upset at losing one due to someone else's negligence, but surely negligence resulting in 2 deaths should incur a far higher charge. Perhaps if we ever have the misfortune to have someone injured on one of our attractions, we should promptly beat them to death to keep the costs down.

We spent last weekend in a Mini dealership in the North East providing ice cream and popcorn to possible purchasers of the new Mini convertible. I have never really looked at these cars, as by and large they are too small for what we need. However I must admit that on closer inspection they are quite a quirky motor, the top of the range Cooper S model boasting some 200+ horse power, which considering the size and weight of the car must make it something of an Exocet missile on the road. Anyway I mentioned to my 10 year old daughter that I would buy her one when she passes her test. "I don't really like them Dad," was her reply. Upon inquiring what she did like in the way of automobiles she gave me a quite concise list, "Aston Martin, Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini or Bentley!". Boy is she going to be disappointed.

Come Sunday we are off to London for 4 days of events, followed by another in Chelmsford for the new client we picked up a couple of weeks ago. Once that is out of the way, I can finish the refurbishment work on our Helter Skelter just in time for its annual MOT, then its off to Northallerton May Fair, one of the handful of traditional funfairs we still attend.

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I know that some people will use any excuse for a celebration, but I have just found out that our cousins across the pond in the good ole US of A, actually celebrate National Cotton Candy Day on 7th December! What a great excuse for a party.

Speaking of cotton candy, or candy floss as it is more popularly known here (the australians call it fairy floss), we are putting some effort into upgrading our online store. Located at CANDY FLOSS STORE we have seen a steady but unspectacular stream of sales through this outlet. We are now looking at expanding and promoting the store to increase this side of our business.

I am just about to jump in the bath as we are off to London again this evening, followed by Chelmsford tomorrow, London again Thursday, a day off Friday (although day off refers to me doing work other than actually operating equipment), Saturday will see us in Blackburn and London yet again. I think looking at it London now accounts for some 40% of our overall business.

We have also just been approved as preferred suppliers to a company operating some 49 sites throughout the UK, so that should develop into a nice steady stream of work.

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Our initial catering line consisted of candy floss and popcorn. Over the course of time we were asked for various items, anything that was requested regularly we decided would make a good line, and in due course we added it to our portfolio. Some lines such as mulled wine, I decided to try "blind" as it were, with quite good results as over the winter months Mulled wine was one of our best lines. Since the end of winter the mulled wine jobs have dried up completely, pretty obvious really as it is a traditional winter drink.

To hopefully take advantage of the warmer summer months (although the great British summertime being what it is means that mulled wine could well be a popular line) we have just put deals in place to supply a line of cold drinks. Our initial offerings are Thick Milk Shakes, Slush, Frozen Cocktails and Pure Fruit Juice.

Our range of ice cream carts are also in regular use, and now we have a reliable supplier of quality Kulfi Ice Cream, we are hoping that will be popular in the speciality Asian wedding market.

Over the next few months we have a number of other new catering products that we will be making available to our client base, so by the end of the summer we should have the most comprehensive line up of traditional catering carts in the U.K.

Our composting initiative is working at full steam now, we haven't actually had a finished load of compost from it yet, but that has been down to two reasons. Firstly, as we arrange catering packages for set numbers of people, we tend to generate a lot less waste than the days when we attended traditional funfairs, also the composter is operating at quite a high temperature, and degrading food waste so rapidly that we can have it half full one day, go back a week later and the level has dropped noticeably. I don't understand the full chemistry behind the process, but it seems that microbiological organisms convert the food waste into carbon dioxide gas.


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The food standards agency are currently trialling nutritional labeling for caterers. Manufacturers are already printing their products with labels showing calories, fat, sodium content etc, but catering companies have not had to do this. At the moment its a voluntary scheme being tried by a limited number of companies and overseen by the FSA. However many trial schemes tend to be ramped up to compulsory schemes at some point, so we have decided to adopt nutritional labeling on our own initiative. All of our carts, (with some 12 different products) have been issued with plaques containing the vital statistics. The next step is to add this data to our main catering website, Candy Floss Crazy.

As the website runs to some 490 pages, it is a reasonably lengthy procedure. We have started already, and candy floss, popcorn and hot dogs have had a small button added in the top right hand corner of the screen. This is labeled INFO/NUTRITION, and when clicked displays the data for that particular cart. We hope to have had all of the pages altered by the end of the month, but as we are currently operating around a dozen websites amounting to over 3000 pages, its a job that is being farmed out to some of the companies we use occasionally to update our sites. The button is shown below.



March has started even better than the first two months of the year. In the 6 days to press, we have received 80% of our total inquiries for the WHOLE of March last year. Add to this another half dozen bookings for March (two thirds of which are in central London) and we are starting to see levels of business that we don't normally receive until around June/July.

We are also due to announce a new concept in carts (along with a number of new lines), this will be designed for smaller events such as dinner parties or weddings which are attended by smaller numbers of guests than a typical corporate event, (for some reason folk in London seem to throw an awful lot of dinner events, but being designed for large numbers of people, our usual cart services are a little bit overkill), this will enable us to offer a better value service in this particular market and we aim to increase our London based workload substantially.

The other news this week is that we have finally sourced a reliable, provider for Kulfi Ice Cream, this is an Asian delicacy, very similar to ice cream, but with a much creamier texture. As we attended a high number of Asian weddings last year we hope that this will prove to be a popular choice.

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Look at this link, Medical Candy Floss Breakthrough. It seems that humble candy floss could herald a breakthrough treatment for burns victims requiring skin grafts.

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“If everything else fails, read the instructions”

I have always been a believer in reading the instructions before I start trying to do something. I often upbraid others for wasting time fiddling with things for hours, then having to eventually resort to reading the instructions and discovering that what they were trying to do is either A impossible or B a 5 second process by simply pressing the correct series of buttons.

Well I have to admit that I have fallen foul of my own rules. During the course of last year we attended a large number of events in central London. Quite often with 2 vehicles, and on one particularly busy day we had a total of 5 vans and cars there. This has been for anything from one large event to upto five smaller events on the same day. Now central London is covered by the London Congestion Charge, and its my responsibility to register the vehicles for this and pay the required charges. Usually I manage it O.K., however on a number of occasions I have ended up with PCN's (Penalty Charge Notices). At the last count, along with parking fines and one tow away fee it added up to a shade over £800, none of which is tax deductible. The usual sequence of events is that due to the amount of events we are involved with, we set off mega early for the capital and I suddenly realise that I have not paid the congestion charges. I then resolve that I will do it the next morning without fail. We then carry out the one two, three or more events over the course of the day, arriving back home at perhaps 5AM. We then have two or three hours sleep, before jumping up and setting off to another part of the country for that days events, and I plain forget to pay our dues. Prompt a week later when a demand (or possibly more than one) drop thorough our letterbox.

Well I looked into the Transport for London site yesterday, and discovered that if I register our vehicles as a fleet, it insures me from receiving PCN charges, as every time we travel into London our number triggers an invoice that is sent out for that vehicle, brilliant! We have to register a minimum of ten vehicles at £10 each, which is less than the fine for two PCN's. Added to the fact that we have just accepted our 67th booking for this season (and we haven't reached April/May yet which is usually when we receive well over 50% of our bookings), over 25% of which are in London, and I could quite possibly have just presented a sizable fine from adding up over the season.

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We are pleased to announce that under the local authorities health and hygiene inspection procedure, called Scores On The Doors, we have just been awarded 5 stars for our catering operations. You are allowed one minor failing under the 5 star rating, but I am glad to say we got the perfect score with no faults at all. This makes all the hard work and rigorous quality control procedures worthwhile.

In line with our health and safety policies I have just arranged for a number of additional staff to take first aid courses in early April, and I intend to have everyone trained as fire marshal's before the start of the main season. We have added a number of extra fire extinguishers to our pool, consisting of small 1 or 2 kg dry powder devices, designed to be stored on our carts and mini stalls, larger 6kg dry powder extinguishers for use in our central pool, (the idea is the small device is used to fight the fire initially, gaining time for our safety officers to move the larger devices to the point of the fire). We also added wet chemical extinguishers specifically for attractions such as the doughnut cart which uses large quantities of hot cooking oil.

Our safety paperwork has also grown, we now have around 90 pages of safety related data, before we add the individual risk assessments and insurance documents. Luckily virtually all of our clients now accept this data as either a pdf file or supplied on cd, so we are managing to keep within our environmental policies.

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Our small Victorian style side stalls have turned out to be one of our most versatile and popular additions to our portfolio of attractions. This was proven again today when we attended an event taking place in South Shields. It was organised by a North East events management company that we have worked for on a number of projects. Anyway, this particular one we were asked to provide a stall to fit in with the theme of healthy hearts. The budget we were allocated was pretty small, but nevertheless we still managed to have custom printed banner across the back of the stall. We also changed one of our coconut shy games into a knock the heart off (using softer balls than we would with the coconuts). Everything worked well and we had an enjoyable visit back to my native North East.

After the event finished we called in at a new Valentines funfair. Arthur was there with a couple of items of equipment. Business was steady, but there is still time for it to improve. The event itself looked well, with fencing around the complete site, an impressive entrance gate and a good selection of attractions from around the country. I hope it does well as it will benefit the business as a whole to have new events coming online, but I really think that this could be a summer that see things tight right the way through.



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