Over the last 2 weeks we have had an incredible amount of rain fall in the Yorkshire area. We have been lucky in that virtually all of our events escaped the weather. The only failure we did have was in supplying a dodgem ride to Emmanuel College in Cambridge. That particular ride was stuck in a flooded field in the Nottinghamshire area and couldn't make the event.

The biggest of our two Cambridge events went off without a hitch. We needed to bring a transformer in at the last minute as we were not allowed to operate our generators, and we were sweating on it arriving but it made it with about 10 minutes to spare. The Trinity college ball is the biggest college event in the country, and I have to say I was impressed. Over the course of the night around 1000 bottles of champagne are consumed, along with copious amounts of other drinks, yet we did not see any sign of misbehaving, drunkenness or other bad behaviour. The atmosphere was absolutely fantastic and I think we would have to go a long way to find a more stunning venue.

After the event finished at 6 in the morning, I dismantled the equipment we had there, jumped into one of our transport units and drove back to our West Yorkshire depot. After a quick snack we moved equipment upto Newcastle upon Tyne for the giant Hoppings fair. Next morning I was up at the crack of dawn to set our stuff up (in torrential rain). The next day I travelled to Bradford for an event, followed this the day after with an event in Oxford (another all night ball at Queens college), dashed from there to Birmingham for the 25th anniversary funday at Webasto Windows factory. Made it home late that night ready for a trip the next day to Hull for a small event, oh I forgot to mention that before setting off to the Trinity event on the previous Sunday, we had presented attractions at the University of Newcastle graduation ball on the Friday and the York law college ball on the Saturday. Now I have a weeks work getting our small shooting gallery ready for a music festival in Knebworth at the weekend.




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The Salford event was an important one for us. Part of our long term strategy is to operate at prestigious events, and build long term relationships with the clients. The health and safety demands were particularly high at this event, culminating in us supplying a dossier of around 90 pages for the 7 attractions we were operating there. The health and safety guy from Salford council came across as a bit unfriendly and we were expecting trouble from him at the event, (last years operators were removed from the site due to health and safety failings). as it happened we needn't have worried. He commented that our paperwork was the most professional he had ever seen, and that we were obviously professional operators so he had no concerns with us.

Arthur turned up the second day fresh from running a highly successful event at the Gainsborough Riverside festival. He operated the moonwalk, ( a type of enclosed bouncy castle). This had a slit for a door through which a constant stream of cold air was blowing. Because of this cooling breeze, Arthur didnt realise how hot the day was. As we finished operating, Arthur exclaimed that his head hurt. "No problem", I said, "I have some headache tablets"
"I haven't got a headache, my £%$^ing head hurts." exclaimed Arthur.
When I took the time to look at him, I discovered that his face and head was glowing read with severe sunburn. When he took his shirt off and expsed his lille white body he looked like a swan vesta match. Walking across the road cars were stopping at what they thought was a red traffic light. The rest of us of course found his affliction hysterically funny. Especially when he removed his glasses and we saw the raccoon like stripe across his eyes


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I've just changed the ring tone on my phone to the Queen/David Bowie collaboration, "Under Pressure". Sitting here looking at the wall planner for this month, we have 17 events taking place in 21 days. Bearing in mind that these events stretch from Newcastle Upon Tyne in the North, down to Oxford in the South, and Salford in the East over to Cambridge in the West and you have an idea of how much work we have taken on, and over how wide an area! Add to this mix a deal I am working on to brand one of our Shooting Gallery units for use at a number of major public events and we will be virtually flat out for the entire month of June, also that 17 events does not include the traditional funfairs we will be attending which add another four or five events into the mix.

I have a question for anyone reading this, If you are thinking of hiring funfair attractions, would the green credentials of the operator have any bearing on your choice of funfair provider?

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Well we've just picked up another high profile event, the Salford mini soccer festival, http://www.manchesterfa.co.uk/sms/index.html

This is an amazing football tournament held at the Littleton road sports village in Salford. Over 180 teams of youngsters battle it out over the 2 days, with awards being presented for fair play. The team members will have the chance to have their photograph taken with the FA cup and it promises to be a spectacular 2 day event.

One thing that is notable about the event is the paperwork. We are presenting 7 attractions there, but our safety dossier runs to almost 80 pages! If everyone else upgrades their paperwork requirements to this level, we are going to use one heck of a lot of trees.

Over the weekend we attended 2 weddings with a Victorian Candy Floss Cart. Like other events of this type they were thoroughly enjoyable, everyone is out to have a good time, and they are a pleasure to attend. We also presented a candy floss unit at one of the Durham colleges, Arthur took the stall through and set it up, and was really miffed that he couldn't stay, I think it had something to do with the combination of hot weather, drink and extremely attractive young ladies walking about, Arthur might wear glasses, but he has the vision of a hawk.

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