We attended a corporate event recently in Glasgow. With other events we had on the same day it was down to me, my other half and Lisa, the famous Arthur's wife, to run everything.

The event went well and we had a good time. On the way home, one of the girls suddenly noticed the low fuel warning light was on, (in actual fact it had been on for about 10 miles but I was hoping they wouldn't notice), anyway I told them it would be alright and we would make it to Washington services. They insisted we stopped before then, only unfortunately the A69 road has a distinct lack of garages, and the little towns bordering the road tend to be pretty much closed at 2 in the morning.

As the miles rolled by and the girls got more nervous, I cheerily told them that we were only about 30 miles away from were Arthur was stationed and he would be able to bring fuel out if need be. Lisa responded by sending the following text to Arthur;

"Captain numb nuts hasn't fuelled up, the van is ready for conking, he thinks you are the AA" She has a ripe turn of phrase that girl, personally I think she should ask the finishing school for a refund, but there you go!

Anyway Arthur replied that we would be ok, there was a 24hr garage at the Tesco store in Hexham. As we were passing Hexham at the time we detoured off, and eventually found the Tesco store, which was indeed open 24hrs, nice one Arthur. Unfortunately the Tesco seemed to lack something, a fuel pump, stupid boy (Arthur). So after wasting about 6 miles of our precious fuel we headed back up the open road.

Our next attempt at fuelling up was courtesy of Lisa. "There's 24hr fuel pumps at the Metro centre branch of Asda", so we duly detoured off yet again. This time the store did have a fuel pump, unfortunately they had run out of diesel that afternoon! so we headed back towards the A1, with even me getting worried about our chances this time. As luck would have it turning the corner we came across a 24hr garage, that was actually there, actually open and actually had diesel in stock, so we got away with it by the skin of our teeth.

Funny thing is, I have been in similar situations before, I haven't actually ever run out, (well I once did in a large 8 wheeled vehicle, but it was at the top of a hill, and I managed to freewheel down the hill, along the road and into a garage, stopping at the actual pump), I remember when I was still living at home and I could judge my Dads cars to within about 300 yards of running out of fuel. One particular morning I was laid underneath a lorry undertaking some minor repairs, when my Dad and my sister came marching out the front door, into a car and off for a driving lesson. About 40 minutes later I heard my dads footsteps, but heard no car! Then came a rather angry sounding shout, "Where's Jason the little ^£%^"*("(£^. Turns out my old man had run out of fuel about 3 miles up the road and had to walk back to get his other car and some money for fuel. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and stayed where I was

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We have a number of different vehicles we use depending on the requirements of each particular job. We own and operate our own heavy goods vehicles for the larger events, or events requiring heavy equipment to be transported. For mid range jobs we have an operating arrangement with a local van hire company who provide a wide range of vans tailored to our precise requirements. The smallest of our requirements, usually a single candy floss cart or side stall is now covered by our latest toy, a compact Jaguar estate pictured below. With the addition of a roof rack, and a fuel efficient diesel engine this allows us to attend some of the far flung places we travel to in a degree of comfort.

JARM Amusements newest addition to the logistics fleet, a compact Jaguar estate.

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“It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.”
Dave Barry



The above quote by the American humourist, Dave Berry should perhaps have the word tent replaced with fairground. Last season saw a large section of the year washed out, and we all thought that lightning couldn't strike twice, but it has. The amount of events that have been called off for this weekend is stagerring. We have had 3 cancelled for tomorrow. Luckily 2 of them are being rearranged and the third we are in negotiations to agree a suitable cancellation fee. Normally this isn't something we demand, but cancelling an event with less than 48 hours notice isn't on, especially when we have sub contracted a large amount of additional equipment in.

Losing another large tranch of the season is going to hurt a lot of operators, luckily with us switching to mainly corporate events we are to some degree insulated from this. If the country slides into the predicted recession, then I think there will be a sharp contraction in the amount of attractions operating in the UK.

Corporate Funfair Hire


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