After Northallerton Mayfair, the Helter Skelter attended a fair at Shirebrook in Derbyshire, from there it was taken back to our yard in Yorkshire to be worked upon. I spent a couple of days painting and cursing the heat (too hot to work comfortably) and wishing it would cool down. Well now it has, for almost 2 weeks solid it has never stopped raining. Weve have just been told that we cannot pull onto Gosforth Park for the Newcastle Music Festival due to the ground being too soft. We also expect trouble getting onto Harrogate Stray due to the ground conditions.
Reports from around the region suggest this Whisuntide is going to be problematic to say the least.
We can announce that we have been invited to provide a small family funfair in support of the world rowing championships 2006. These are being held at Dorney Lake, the Eton College Rowing Lake in Eton near Windsor. This is the first time in over 20 years that the championships have been held in the U.K. and there will be almost 2000 athletes from something like 75 nations taking part.
This is probably our most prestigious event this year and we will be operating a special cut price scheme for the visitors to the event, allowing them to purchase a day pass for their children giving unlimited rides for the day, all at a real value for money rate.
Princess Anne is due to visit the event on one of the days, and Sir Steven Redgrave Should hopefully be putting in an appearance.
Other news is that we have just picked up four more events, two of them charity based, one a university graduation ball and the final one a community event hosted by a radio station, so we are facing an extremely hectic couple of months.
Sometimes I think that I've managed to hook up with some hollywood stars. Arthur is like a mini-me version of Austin Powers, and Renny is a perfect copy of the famous Peter Sellers character, Inspector Clouseau, not in looks admittedly, but in his ability to turn a perfectly calm, under control situation into a music hall comedy. We have just attended an event at the Don Valley Stadium. Now we haven't worked for this particular facility before so we were going all out to provide a first rate service. I took most of the equipment through and set it up on Saturday afternoon, the idea being I could have a lay in on Sunday and a nice leisurely trip through to open on Sunday. Ha! that's what I thought, just after half five Sunday morning my phone wakes everyone up, answering it I hear Renny, " you'll have to come through quick" he pleads, "Why" "because I'm stuck" "how the ###@**$@ hell are you stuck, we're on tarmac" (many fairs are in fields and with poor weather we do occasionally become stuck), "my back coupling has dug into the road, I can't move and the entrance to the event is blocked! " "get a jack, jack the lorry up and put blocks under the wheels" "I haven't got a jack or blocks" (lord help us) "my lorry is already there, start it up and use it to pull yourself in" " great, that's what I'll do"
Right, crisis over, back to bed. WRONG, 5 minutes later the phone goes again, " where the chain?" "what chain?" " the chain to pull the lorry in with", " there isn't one in that lorry, where's your chain?" "at Bulwell" "what the **£%@# hell is the chain doing at Bulwell?" "I didn't know I was going to get stuck" "alright I'm setting off now"
So everyone gets up, I go and find a chain in the yard and we rush off to Sheffield. All the way there I've got visions of the Sheffield Half Marathon being cancelled due to our vehicle been stuck in the entrance, great debut by us. When we get there Renny informs me that the event organisers have the fire brigade on standby to pull him out the way, fortunately I manage to move him quickly and good order is restored. The event was a reasonable day for us, and the Lady we had been dealing with informed me that she runs her own event management company and is suitably impressed by us (notwithstanding Renny's escapades) to inform us that she will be in touch with more events, so all's well that ends well.
Another fruitful week where we have picked up 3 new events. One of them is at a venue that people have been trying to locate funfair attractions at for quite a while without success. We have been invited to supply a small number of attractions to see how things go, with the possibility of a large number of events to follow. The other two events are both charity related continuing our strong showing in the charity sector.
After next week we should be able to announce what is possibly our most prestigious event to date. We had to supply in depth details of our operations along with a number of references from existing corporate clients before we were considered for the job.
On the attractions front, the recently acquired Helter Skelter has just arrived back at our upton depot to allow us a couple more weeks working on its appearance, so hopefully by the time it re-emerges it will be beginning to look more presentable. We hit upon the concept of offering advertising space on some of the panels, a number of clients have expressed an interest in this so it could possibly be another revenue stream.
Most of the business reports arriving from the pre Easter fairs made for gloomy reading with few reported successful events, however our Easter fairs were very good so this does give some hope for the summer season. Northallerton which is the first of our major street fair events has fallen a bit flat, although it is possible that it is too close to Easter. This has happened in the past with similar results so hopefully it is not an indicator of things to come.
On the bright side we have just signed agreements for 6 more events during the past week, and we have also taken a stake in an event promotions company. The company called Associated Events will shortly be announcing a major deal for a summer series of events so we should have another big increase in the number of events we will be providing attractions to.
