We've just finished at our first two events in the funfair calander. These were Whitley Bay in the North East and Lister Park near Bradford. Both events were pleasingly succesful which hopefully bodes well for the future.

The event at Lister Park saw our Helter Skelter make its debut. It isn't decorated to the standard I would like and I didn't want to operate it there, but Renny was all for taking it. I have to admit that I was wrong, the attraction took enough to pay for its purchase price and most of the money we have spent on it since. We are now giving serious thought to purchasing another example to enable us to operate one at fairgrounds and the other at corporate events.

At the moment we are working flat out on our new helter skelter in an attempt to get it usable for Easter. My personal take on maintenance is that if a job is spotted that has implications for safety it is done immediately. When you are operating rides for members of the public that is the only option available. Working on the helter skelter, we have had to replace 4 sets of stairs, whilst fitting one set I noticed a bracket that supports the stair was cracked, I mentioned this to Renny and told him it needed welding immediately, at that my mother in law arrived on the scene with lunch. By the time we had polished the bacon sandwiches off we had forgotten all about our cracked bracket!

About half an hour later, whilst assembling the fifth level of the attraction, I stepped onto a flight of stairs carrying a heavy hand rail, the bracket finally chose that moment to snap, the stairs disappeared and I began an acceleration downwards, much in the same trajectory that the lumphammer had taken the week before. Now in total I fell about 16feet, I've never fallen from height before so it was a new experience for me. I was surprised at how long the fall seemed to take, I still don't know the acceleration rate of a falling object, but I should imagine I hit the bottom deck in less than a second, yet I had a good 30 second conversation with myself on the way down, all centered around the fact that I had just remembered the damaged bracket.

I now hove a problem, if i work on the ground Renny is liable to drop something on me, and if I work on the top I have a feeling I am bound to fall off sooner or later, so know I am practicing fitting my full body harness and fall arrest system on the basis that Renny is still more likely to kill me than I am to fall off and die from rapid deceleration.