The New Stockton On Tees Spring Festival
Work has recently been completed on the new Infinity footbridge in Stockton Upon Tees. The bridge will be officially opened on 14th May in conjunction with the new Stockton Infinity Spring Festival. A new date in Stockton's calender of festival events. We presented a Christmas fair in the town last November, and we have just been asked to provide a funfair and a number of catering units in conjunction with the festival.
A flyer can be downloaded from here, and the festival website is located here.
The bridge itself is a stunning piece of architecture which has already been shortlisted for a number of awards.
Its also another major new event that we have added to our portfolio. We have a number of others that we can announce as soon as we are cleared to do so, and although the corporate side of things has become our main business, we intend to extend our portfolio of traditional funfair events over the next few years.
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I'm still a little drowsy sat here writing this due to returning from an event in Slough around 5 this morning (a bit like buses coming all at once, that was our second Slough event in under a week), anyway I have just found out that at an upcoming event, not one we are in charge of, the local constabulary have asked for a number of free ride tickets. Now this is not in itself an unusual occurrence, free ride tickets are regularly dispensed to various deserving groups. The "deserving group" in this affair, happen to be the local yob element. Basically if you are someone who likes to mug old ladies, or break into other peoples homes, and you promise to be good for a week, you will be "rewarded" by being given tickets to go to the fair for free. If you are a law abiding youth, who perhaps comes from a disadvantaged family, you probably won't be able to afford to go to the fair, so it's tough.
My advice would be to mug the next old person you see (person rather than little old lady, see we are now politically correct), or perhaps go and smash someones windows, then when you are arrested (although to be fair you would probably get arrested quicker parking on double yellow lines), you can promise to be good and go to the fair for free.
Personally I think flogging those who don't behave and rewarding those who do would be a better system.
Last Wednesday I spent with Arthur's wife, Lisa, finishing off a first aid course (we should all be trained up pretty soon), my other half was at an event near London, and Arthur was in Derby providing attractions to a company pitching for 8 family fundays, if we get the job it should provide an interesting logistics challenge as they are all on the same weekend! Anyway the course was run very professionally, but in a lighthearted way which made it enjoyable. We learnt a lot of stuff which could possibly save someones life so its well worth while. During one exercise we were shown an image of an injury victim and had to state the required treatment, I happened to draw an image of a rather attractive young lady who had fallen down a flight of stairs cutting her leg. My recommended course of treatment, immediate application of vigorous mouth to mouth resuscitation, met with a stern look from the instructor and a whack across the back of the head from Lisa, but I think that you cannot be too careful with injuries and she may have developed breathing difficulties.
We should very shortly be able to announce two new events in our portfolio of traditional funfairs, one is entirely our own affair, the other a joint venture under the Universal Funfairs brand we established with a Yorkshire operator for an event last season.
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My advice would be to mug the next old person you see (person rather than little old lady, see we are now politically correct), or perhaps go and smash someones windows, then when you are arrested (although to be fair you would probably get arrested quicker parking on double yellow lines), you can promise to be good and go to the fair for free.
Personally I think flogging those who don't behave and rewarding those who do would be a better system.
Last Wednesday I spent with Arthur's wife, Lisa, finishing off a first aid course (we should all be trained up pretty soon), my other half was at an event near London, and Arthur was in Derby providing attractions to a company pitching for 8 family fundays, if we get the job it should provide an interesting logistics challenge as they are all on the same weekend! Anyway the course was run very professionally, but in a lighthearted way which made it enjoyable. We learnt a lot of stuff which could possibly save someones life so its well worth while. During one exercise we were shown an image of an injury victim and had to state the required treatment, I happened to draw an image of a rather attractive young lady who had fallen down a flight of stairs cutting her leg. My recommended course of treatment, immediate application of vigorous mouth to mouth resuscitation, met with a stern look from the instructor and a whack across the back of the head from Lisa, but I think that you cannot be too careful with injuries and she may have developed breathing difficulties.
We should very shortly be able to announce two new events in our portfolio of traditional funfairs, one is entirely our own affair, the other a joint venture under the Universal Funfairs brand we established with a Yorkshire operator for an event last season.
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I read a news report this morning about a Polish registered car travelling the wrong way up a motorway, colliding with a Jaguar going in the correct direction and causing the death of 5 people. This isn't an isolated incident, about 3 years ago I was doing some agency driving in the winter months, when out of the early morning gloom on the A1M, a foreign registered lorry came hurtling towards me, luckily being early morning the road was pretty empty and there was plenty of room for evasive action. Unfortunately with the relaxation of cabotage rules, and the disparity in fuel prices between here and the continent making it profitable for european lorries to ply their trade over here, this isn't going to get better any time soon. Especially when you take into account the fact that fines for driving offenses are pretty much disregarded once the offended leaves these shores, and it is too much time and trouble to try and chase them for payment.
Its not just major offenses, but a vast multitude of minor ones as well, you drive a HGV about with no number plate on for any length of time and you are pretty sure to receive a fine for your crime. Yet you take note of just how many non British registered vehicles are tramping up and down the highways and byways of this nation without plates on their trailers, or quite often with different plates to the towing vehicle. They are pretty much disregarded by traffic officers, as they know the fixed penalty they issue will be ripped up once they are out of sight. Contrast this to the French system, where offenders are marched to the nearest cash point to withdraw the money for the fine. No doubt if we implement this system it will breach someones human rights.
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Its not just major offenses, but a vast multitude of minor ones as well, you drive a HGV about with no number plate on for any length of time and you are pretty sure to receive a fine for your crime. Yet you take note of just how many non British registered vehicles are tramping up and down the highways and byways of this nation without plates on their trailers, or quite often with different plates to the towing vehicle. They are pretty much disregarded by traffic officers, as they know the fixed penalty they issue will be ripped up once they are out of sight. Contrast this to the French system, where offenders are marched to the nearest cash point to withdraw the money for the fine. No doubt if we implement this system it will breach someones human rights.
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With most of the reports coming in from the early season funfairs being favourable, it was with renewed optimism that everyone was looking forward to Easter, especially as the same holiday last year was wiped out by dreadful weather. Unfortunately as it has turned out, the bulk of the Easter fairs have seen a fairly poor level of business, so perhaps the credit crunch is having an effect after all.
We haven't bothered with any traditional funfairs this Easter, simply because of our corporate event commitments. Starting on 5th April we were in London that day (Sunday), London Monday, London Tuesday and London Wednesday, Chelmsford (about 20 miles form London) Thursday. We then theoretically had 2 days off before Easter Sunday when we were due to attend events in Blackburn and Cambridge. On Thursday evening I was contacted to provide an additional candy floss cart to an event in London (yet again). I tried to lay this event off simply because we were already spread pretty thin. Unfortunately I couldn't find another operator to take the event on so I had to do it myself. Problem was we didn't have a spare cart available (with 7 carts I expected to be able to meet all of our commitments, but I was proved wrong). This resulted in my 2 days off being spent building a new mini cart just to house one of our candy floss machines, the client told me that the room we were in had a low ceiling so I didn't get bother taking the roof to the cart with me (although once there it was apparent that there was adequate headroom), anyway I managed to build the basic cart, spray it and add some decoration in time for the event. This new cart is designed to fit into the rear of a small hatchback car we use occasionally, and is really only designed to accommodate a single item (candy floss, popcorn, ice cream etc). By the end of next week I should have managed to finish the decoration and final fitments and the cart can be added to our standard line up.
As it turned out the London job was quite pleasant, with me arriving back home about half eight this evening. As a bonus, the client turned out to have a very successful Asian wedding planning business and it looks like that one job has turned into a number of bookings, just goes to show that our original motto of try everything is still valid.
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We haven't bothered with any traditional funfairs this Easter, simply because of our corporate event commitments. Starting on 5th April we were in London that day (Sunday), London Monday, London Tuesday and London Wednesday, Chelmsford (about 20 miles form London) Thursday. We then theoretically had 2 days off before Easter Sunday when we were due to attend events in Blackburn and Cambridge. On Thursday evening I was contacted to provide an additional candy floss cart to an event in London (yet again). I tried to lay this event off simply because we were already spread pretty thin. Unfortunately I couldn't find another operator to take the event on so I had to do it myself. Problem was we didn't have a spare cart available (with 7 carts I expected to be able to meet all of our commitments, but I was proved wrong). This resulted in my 2 days off being spent building a new mini cart just to house one of our candy floss machines, the client told me that the room we were in had a low ceiling so I didn't get bother taking the roof to the cart with me (although once there it was apparent that there was adequate headroom), anyway I managed to build the basic cart, spray it and add some decoration in time for the event. This new cart is designed to fit into the rear of a small hatchback car we use occasionally, and is really only designed to accommodate a single item (candy floss, popcorn, ice cream etc). By the end of next week I should have managed to finish the decoration and final fitments and the cart can be added to our standard line up.
As it turned out the London job was quite pleasant, with me arriving back home about half eight this evening. As a bonus, the client turned out to have a very successful Asian wedding planning business and it looks like that one job has turned into a number of bookings, just goes to show that our original motto of try everything is still valid.
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A finger is worth £30,000, 2 lives a mere £10,000
I noticed 2 items in the news recently. In one a man whose negligence led to the death of 2 people and the serious injury of a young child, was fined £10,000. In another, a company where an employee lost one of his fingers in an accident was fined £30,000, with the Health and Safety Executive declaring that "If a proper risk assessment had been carried out, this would never had happened!". To add further to the case, Maurice Agis, the so called "Artist" who had created the structure, has in the past created similar items that have done exactly the same thing, not once but twice previously. So how on earth does the loss of a finger result in a £30K fine and the deaths of 2 people in a mere £10K. I admit that I am quite attached to my own fingers, and would be rightly upset at losing one due to someone else's negligence, but surely negligence resulting in 2 deaths should incur a far higher charge. Perhaps if we ever have the misfortune to have someone injured on one of our attractions, we should promptly beat them to death to keep the costs down.
We spent last weekend in a Mini dealership in the North East providing ice cream and popcorn to possible purchasers of the new Mini convertible. I have never really looked at these cars, as by and large they are too small for what we need. However I must admit that on closer inspection they are quite a quirky motor, the top of the range Cooper S model boasting some 200+ horse power, which considering the size and weight of the car must make it something of an Exocet missile on the road. Anyway I mentioned to my 10 year old daughter that I would buy her one when she passes her test. "I don't really like them Dad," was her reply. Upon inquiring what she did like in the way of automobiles she gave me a quite concise list, "Aston Martin, Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini or Bentley!". Boy is she going to be disappointed.
Come Sunday we are off to London for 4 days of events, followed by another in Chelmsford for the new client we picked up a couple of weeks ago. Once that is out of the way, I can finish the refurbishment work on our Helter Skelter just in time for its annual MOT, then its off to Northallerton May Fair, one of the handful of traditional funfairs we still attend.
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