We hear daily how everything possible is being done to stamp out racism in this country. Well the following passage is from an online advert by a company called FIREBOX.



"Everyone loves candy floss. As far as naughty-but-nice nostalgic treats go, it's right up there with toffee apples and giant gobstoppers. The trouble is getting your gob round a woolly mass of scrumptious spun sugar usually involves visiting the local fair. And trudging through puddles of diesel amidst swarms of screaming teenagers is about as much fun as riding the chariots after a hot dog supper.

That's why you need to get spinning with our ingenious Candy Floss Maker. With this idiot-proof contraption you'll be making funfair-style candy floss in minutes. Simply add regular granulated sugar and switch it on. That's all there is to it. Well, almost.

As the machine heats up, the central head begins to spin, forcing liquid sugar through its tiny perforations. The instant the threads of sugar hit the air they cool and re-solidify, causing a web of sugary threads to develop in the dishwasher-friendly collection bowl. All you have to do is gather up the yummy wisps on your candy floss cone and get munching. The whole process is really rather wondrous.



The resultant candy floss tastes exactly the same as the woolly, melt in the mouth stuff you wolfed down as a kid. The only difference is you won't have to blag 50p off your mum in order to watch some old hag with a face like a spat out toffee, drop fag ash in the bowl. Speaking of additional ingredients, a dash of food colouring is all you need to make pink, blue or whatever colour you fancy floss."

I wonder what their adverts for pakistani or African products read like, or perhaps they feel the fairground community is the only one that it is acceptable to denigrate and abuse?




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We now have a number of websites catering for fairly specialised events. Anyone looking to hire a Candy Floss Cart or Children's ride for a wedding, private party or small event should visit our CandyFlossCrazy website.

For those needing attractions to attend a community event, fete, gala or charity day, they should view our main website at funfairgames.net

Large corporate events, product launches etc should view our Hire Site

Colleges and Universities holding events should visit the College section of funfairgames

If you require help with planning or designing an event, sourcing rides and games either to buy or long term hire you should visit the corporate planning section of funfairgames.








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Usually about this time of the year things begin to go quiet. This year however we are still picking up bookings for amongst other things our children's rides. We've just been invited to supply a small funfair to the Market City of Ripon in North Yorkshire. This is one of our favourite venues as we always seem to do well there. It seems that a market provider has let them down at the lst minute so we were contacted and agreed to come to the rescue.

We have a small corporate event on the same day but that shouldn't pose too much of a problem.

Ready for the new season next year we have acquired 2 new attractions. The first is a set of Victorian style swing boats which should complement our helter skelter very nicely. As they are such a good fit with that particular attraction we will be marketing them using the helter skelter hire website, so anyone wanting a set of swing boats for there event should visit HelterSkelterHire

The second is a catering unit selling Real German Sausages such as Bratwurst. Operated by a close family member the unit can be viewed in Leeds city centre Wednesdays to Saturdays.








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With the amount of work we have undertaken over the last few months, our coming events service has suffered due to a lack of time needed to keep updating it. We've finally streamlined things to make the service easier to update so here are the microformats for the next 2 upcoming events.




Ponderosa Christmas Market:
November 26th
,
at the Ponderosa Farm, Heckmondwike






Thornbridge Hall, Christmas Fayre:
December 17th
,
at the Thornbridge Hall, Bakewell




The first one is at a rare breeds animal farm near Heckmondwike in Yorkshire which specialises in providing an experience for disadvantaged and disabled children. The second is at Thornbridge Hall near Bakewell. We provided a small funfair in the summer for their summer fayre. We are repeating the exercise for the Christmas event and have been asked to repeat the summer fayre with them. This estate must be one of the most stunning private estates in the country and it is a privilege to operate funfair attractions there.








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Its become apparant over time that the 2 most requested funfair rides for hire are the Victorian Carousel and the Dodgems. These account for probably 50% of the requests we receive. Details of dodgems can be found on our corporate hire website at Dodgem Hire and carousels at Carousel Hire. If you are looking to hire childrens attractions then our sister site candyflosscrazy.com specialise in this sort of event.

We have had an interesting week, with a corporate event for Gladman Ltd, one of the countries biggest construction groups. We supplied a dodgem track and shooting gallery for the launch of the Vault, a 20 acre building designed to be a distribution centre for someone like Tesco's. We also supplied 2 rides, candy floss and a selection of garden games to a private party at a house in Worksop, and we then rounded the week off by opening at the South Elsmall Christmas lights switch on, and a Victorian Christmas market in Hornsea.












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We picked up an important corporate event from one of the biggest companies in its particular field. This company is attempting to let or sell a building valued somewhere in the £35 million plus bracket. We have supplied a couple of attractions for their open day where they are helicoptering in some important potential customers.

The building itself covers some 20 acres of land and is the largest structure we have ever operated inside of.

The event is being held in Liverpool, and on Tuesday just gone I drove one of our Foden units containing a shooting gallery over the pennines to the event. Now this particular vehicle suffered a damaged radiator on Sunday, meaning it had to be recovered and didn't make an event it was due to attend. Because of this I took it steady on the way to Liverpool, I also stopped to fuel up and to check the radiator for leaks a couple of times. It took me a little over 2 hours to get there. To save someone following me in a car, I decided to get the train back. BIG MISTAKE. I walked into a ticket office and asked for a ticket from Liverpool to Wakefield. I was told to change at Manchester and then Birmingham. Now Geography was never my strongest subject at school, but I do know that Birmingham is not on the way to Wakefield when you are starting at Liverpool. After questioning this I was given another route via manchester and Huddersfield.

I managed to get to Huddersfield without mishap, and on arriving asked the ticket office which platform to board at, "next train platform 6 ", was the reply. I hurried through the underpass to platform 6 and a train was just pulling in. I duly boarded it and settled down for the last leg of my journey. As the train left the station, the conductor came round checking tickets, on handing her mine she exclaimed this ticket isn't valid for this train. "Why not", I asked, "It says on it to Wakefield."
"Yes but this train is going to Leeds"
"£*£&$%^$%£ why " I asked, "I was told next train at Platform 6"
"that's right", she said, "Only at the last minute they decided to switch platforms and put the Leeds train on 6"

The upshot was that the error only cost me 30 minutes, meaning I reached home in just under 5 hours. If I had caught the correct train I would have made it in 4 and a half hours, twice the time a 20 year old lorry, climbing the highest motorway in England and being held back because of worries about the cooling system, took. And they say use public transport!








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A mainstay of the transport industry in this country for over 100 years, Foden trucks has finally ceased production. Taken over by Paccar in the 1980's the marque was deemed to have sales too low to support continuation of the brand. Foden vehicles are found in large numbers on any fairground in this country, due to their rugged build, rot proof construction and easy availability of double drive vehicles.

As we tend to use older vehicles for our purposes, we will have a steady supply of Fodens for the foreseeable future, but inevitably we will end up having to move to a foreign make.

Now imagine if the haulage industry in this country had taken a leaf out of our European partners books. In Germany the top selling vehicle is German, in Italy it's Italian, Holland its Dutch and so on throughout Europe. In Great Britain the top selling vehicle is from any country except Britain. Perhaps if our transport companies had bought British then many of the historic vehicle makes would still exist, Leyland, Foden, Scammell, Albion, A.E.C., Thorneycroft are all gone. We regularly hear complaints from the haulage industry about manufacturing companies using foreign hauliers to move their goods, well that's poetic justice. If the heavy goods vehicle manufacturing industry had been supported better by the hauliers, perhaps their would be more British goods to be transported, leading to a stronger haulage industry who would need to buy more British lorries leading to more goods being transported and so on. Instead we have just lost another little piece of our manufacturing base.








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