To maintain and repair our vehicles we use the services of a number of local fitters. However to keep costs down, non essential jobs are carried out by members of staff, a system which has worked well for a number of years. Just lately however I have provided a good impersonation of Frank Spencer. Bonfire night I managed to snap an axle of a children's ride and ended up spending the night recovering the trailer. Now I have just turned a problem into a crisis.

One of our Foden transport vehicles has started to suffer from a failing alternator. In layman's terms it means that when you turn the headlights on they drain the battery until your lights go out and the vehicle won't start. Now removing an alternator consists of removing two bolts and disconnecting three wires. BUT to get to the alternator on the engine, the cab must be tilted, this is achieved by inserting a bar into a pumping mechanism and working it up and down until the cab tilts forward to allow engine access. Easy peasy, WRONG!, I worked the bar until a bang indicated that one of the hydraulic pipes connected to the tilt mechanism had burst. There are two pipes to this mechanism, one about 18 inches long with easy access, the other about 8 feet long and wrapped all around the underside of the vehicle. Now to change this pipe you need to tilt the cab, but to tilt the cab you need to change the pipe.

I ended up spending the morning trying to dislocate my arms so that I could undo the pipe. Eventually exhausted, covered in muck and thoroughly fed up I succeeded. Tomorrow I have to repeat the exercise in reverse to refit the new pipe. Then hopefully I can tilt the cab, remove my alternator and get that replaced!!!

For a while now a few of us have felt that something is missing from the modern fairground. The atmosphere that we remember from our childhood seems to be sadly lacking at many modern events. We have some ideas that we are considering using for the upcoming season but we would be interested in any thoughts on what should or should not be present at today's funfairs.

A piece of good news this week, the carousel that was reported destroyed in the arson attack, may be repairable, it seems that the BBC report was a little exaggerated, and although the ride is extensively damaged, the owners feel they can restore it to its former glory.

The furore over the last twelve months about illegal Gypsy encampments has had a negative effect on the funfair industry. A number of developments of winter sites for showmen have received knocks when local councils have refused them planning permission, possibly in part due to a knee jerk reaction to the Gypsy 'problem'.

Perhaps the most serious of these is at Gotherington near Cheltenham where 17 travelling showmen have been fighting for the last 4 years for permission to use the land they own for winter parking. They have good support in the local community, have encountered no problems over the last 4 years, yet the council will not entertain the idea of them having use of the land. On 28th of November the council are at the High Court trying to win a decision to have the showmen, both men and women, committed to prison. Hopefully due to the extended families found on the fairground the children should be spared the ordeal of being taken into care, but who knows?

I have heard people in the past claim that everyone including showmen and Gypsies should follow the same rules but, as an example, the site we occupy which was purchased and developed by my father in law took him almost 20 years to obtain planning permission, he had numerous sites in the area and fought and won 2 public enquiries before he finally was able to legally occupy the site. A short time later he applied for permission to build 2 houses on a piece of land he owned, this was granted within about 6 months with no hassle, so there is an apparent inequality and dare I say it racially motivated bias endemic within the planning system.

Harris Bros. 140 year old carousel has been destroyed in what was believed to be an arson attack at at a West Sussex fairground. Fire crews called to market square, Petworth on Friday 18th November and managed to prevent the blaze spreading to any other attractions. Attacks like this on original vintage equipment are tragic, they are part of the fairground heritage and once gone cannot be replaced.

I've just visited the Sundown Adventure Park, a theme park especially designed for the under 10s. I suppose its a bit of a busmans holiday, but I like to look at how other people do things, sometimes you come across good ideas or examples of fresh thinking. The park is well worth an afternoons visit, and the absence of teenage attractions resulted in a real pleasant family atmosphere.

I've talked before about the lunacy of some council jobsworths, but I've just come across another glaring example. A local event we are have attended for the past 10 years is held in a shopping precinct. usually we arrive with the attractions around 6am, erect them then remove the vehicles before the shops open. This year we have been told we cannot arrive until 1pm.By then the shopping day is in full flow and we will be menouvering heavy goods vehicles around the pedestrians, great for public safety!!!

The funfair season has just about petered out, we still have a few Christmas light switch ons but that's about it. We've just received a letter from the Ripon City Partnership, (we supplied a couple of catering units to their recent ice skating event), thanking us for attending their event. This makes a nice change to be thanked by someone and hopefully we will be finding ourselves at some more events in the city of Ripon.

I was always under the impression that local councils had a duty to their council tax payers to ensure they made the best use of their money. Well, more fool me, for about the last 10 years we have attended an event with a local council for their annual christmas lights switch on. The event wasn't run by us we merely attended with some of our attractions. Normally about 25-30 different fairground attractions occupied the main street and paid rent to the council. This year there will only be room for about 10 items, the reason is that the council needs the rest of the space to erect the ice rink that they have hired.

We have attended events with ice rinks before and normally the ice rinks can cost anything upward of £1500-00 to hire. With the loss in revenue from the fairground rides the council has suddenly found that it has exhausted its budget and may not be able to switch the Christmas lights on!!!

Is this mismanagement or merely incompetence?

I struggled into bed around 4-30 am after the Glossop misadventure, at 5-30 the alarm went off to wake me ready for the Ripon event. Great who needs sleep. It was blowing a gale and bucketing rain as I left for Ripon, which was an event being held in a field so would probably end up with us having to recover everything from the roadside using chains. The organiser had provided me with a list of attractions at the event, these ranged from the army, through a classic car show to a display by the R.A.F., he was also expecting upto 100 charities to be involved so we were looking at a major event.

As I turned into the venue (Ripon Racecourse) my heart sank, our attractions were all in place and being assembled, but that was it, the rest of the field was empty. We were meant to start at 10am but it was obvious this wasn't going to happen, something was terribly wrong. I gathered Arthur and Renny (my partners in crime) and asked what they thought, I was pessimistic at this point but they were both of the opinion that 'we are here so we may as well try it'.

It was at this point that it happened, a very large swan decided to pick a fight, now it was obviously an intelligent swan as both Renny and I are 6 footers, Arthur on the other hand is 2 inches short of being tall enough to be a midget. So the swan attacked him. We were rolling around in hysterical laughter so weren't much help, while Arthur decided discretion was the better part of valour and beat a hasty retreat. The swan spent the rest of the day following Arthur around hoping for a repeat performance, while Arthur spent the day trying to keep one step ahead of the swan.

The event never really got going and we just about scraped our expenses together. We had attended 5 events in 4 days over the bonfire weekend , 4 out of the 5 had been successful so an 80% success rate wasn't too bad.

The Bonfire week is one of our most hectic. This year we did 5 events in 4 days. Now we plan carefully and we carry spares for almost everything, but with the miles we are covering we expect some trouble on the way. This year everything went perfectly until the 4th event at Glossop.
Reaching the venue, Renny (who had arrived earlier) noticed a burning smell, 'probably the clutch' I said thinking of the hills we had just climbed. 'Nope' said Renny, probably that wheel hanging off!!! When I looked a wheel on the ride I was towing was indeed at an odd angle. Now wheel bearings dont fail often, but we carry spares for them and can change one in about 15 minutes so I wasn't worried. Stripping the wheel down I couldnt undo the locking nut, so I applied a bit more force. Crack!, the stub axle the wheel attaches to snapped. We definitely don't carry spare axles and this was late on Saturday afternoon so there was no chance of being able to source one.

The decision was made to carry on with the event and sort the wheel afterwards. The Glossop fireworks display was one of the best we have seen and the night was very successful. After dismantling the attractions we hit upon the idea of calling the AA to recover the trailer mounted ride. After about a 2 hour wait a miniture breakdown lorry arrived, 'That wont fit mate' declared the driver (bleeding obvious really), 'I'll send for our biggest breakdown wagon'. Another hour later dinky toy 2 turned up, 'That wont fit mate' declared driver no.2 (what is this, state the bleeding obvious week), 'we will have to tell the AA we can't do it. 10 minutes later the AA rang to say that the ride was 12 inches bigger than they had to carry under the terms of our contract and they could arrange recovery for £650-00 plus VAT. For a 70 mile round trip that was nearly £10-00 a mile.

We decided to attempt to reach our base on 3 wheels, it was by now the early hours of Sunday morning, we had an escort vehicle and the road over the Woodhead pass was pretty much deserted. A fraught 20 mile an hour journey ended in us successfully reaching home and another crises was over.

We've just got in from the event at Leigh looking like drowned rats due to the day long downpour. . From our point of view the event went well, all of our equipment performed flawlessly and everyone had a good time. The firework firm had trouble setting the fireworks off and the P.A. firm disappeared leaving us to provide that service from one of our rides, all of which made us look good.
There was one sour note, we learned from the clients who hired us that a local showman had rang to tell them not to use us as we were "no good", the client expressed his disgust at this tactic, and informed us that any further events his company were involved with we would be their first choice operator. He went on to say that the showman who had rang him had now been blacklisted by his company so there was some justice in that.