Sometimes there is one element to an event, that no amount of planning can account for or predict. We have just had an hectic day at Stockton on Tees. We have undertaken events before for the event planning team at Stockton council, so when they rang and asked us if we could help the Town centre manageress out by taking some of our old tyme attractions to the opening of the refurbished market it wasn't a problem. In the past the events we have undertaken for the Stockton team have been on a corporate basis, that is we are paid to go and everyone uses the attractions for free. I inquired if this was the case but was told 'No, this time you will be charging the public. We tend not to use the helter skelter for this type of event, but as a gesture of goodwill we agreed to take it.
The timeframe was tight, we couldn't access the market place until 7am, and had to have our vehicles removed by 9.30. We were told that someone would be there at 7 to show us where we had to set up. When no one had arrived by 8 we decided to set up on the small section usually occupied by fairground attractions. When the market manager rolled up, he was concerned that we were a little further over than we should have been, but after a quick rejig everything was deemed ok. This situation lasted all of 5 minutes until his boss rang him to tell him that they were closing the road and we had to build in the middle of the bus lane, so we would have to move. At this point the helter skelter was around 80 percent complete, when I pointed out that to dismantle it, move it the quarter of a mile around the site to the bus lane and set it back up would take us until about 2 in the afternoon, with the event finishing at 4 it didn't leave us enough time to earn any money after what would be a heck of a lot of work. This was when the second bombshell was dropped, 'It doesn't matter how long it takes, we are paying you to set it up!', from our point of view this is a better system, but it came as a complete surprise.
I still didn't fancy the amount of work we had to do, so after a bit of lateral thinking, we removed the top 2 sections of the ride, lowering it to about 28 feet in height, and decided to drive it slowly around the town. This worked brilliantly, right up until the final section of road when we encountered a banner stretched across the width of the street proclaiming the new market as opening today. After 5 minutes trying unsuccessfully to lift the banner over the top of the ride we decided we needed a plan B. The only thing we could do was back up along the road, drive down the wrong side of the street and take a trip round the roundabout the wrong way, trouble was by now we had a queue of about 20 buses stuck behind us, they in turn had all of the approach roads blocked and Stockton was at a standstill!
We gradually managed to move enough vehicles to allow us to back up and complete the last leg of the journey, we finally had everything in operation by midday so it wasn't a complete disaster.
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The timeframe was tight, we couldn't access the market place until 7am, and had to have our vehicles removed by 9.30. We were told that someone would be there at 7 to show us where we had to set up. When no one had arrived by 8 we decided to set up on the small section usually occupied by fairground attractions. When the market manager rolled up, he was concerned that we were a little further over than we should have been, but after a quick rejig everything was deemed ok. This situation lasted all of 5 minutes until his boss rang him to tell him that they were closing the road and we had to build in the middle of the bus lane, so we would have to move. At this point the helter skelter was around 80 percent complete, when I pointed out that to dismantle it, move it the quarter of a mile around the site to the bus lane and set it back up would take us until about 2 in the afternoon, with the event finishing at 4 it didn't leave us enough time to earn any money after what would be a heck of a lot of work. This was when the second bombshell was dropped, 'It doesn't matter how long it takes, we are paying you to set it up!', from our point of view this is a better system, but it came as a complete surprise.
I still didn't fancy the amount of work we had to do, so after a bit of lateral thinking, we removed the top 2 sections of the ride, lowering it to about 28 feet in height, and decided to drive it slowly around the town. This worked brilliantly, right up until the final section of road when we encountered a banner stretched across the width of the street proclaiming the new market as opening today. After 5 minutes trying unsuccessfully to lift the banner over the top of the ride we decided we needed a plan B. The only thing we could do was back up along the road, drive down the wrong side of the street and take a trip round the roundabout the wrong way, trouble was by now we had a queue of about 20 buses stuck behind us, they in turn had all of the approach roads blocked and Stockton was at a standstill!
We gradually managed to move enough vehicles to allow us to back up and complete the last leg of the journey, we finally had everything in operation by midday so it wasn't a complete disaster.
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