Due to some potential licensing opportunities, we have now registered Candy Floss Crazy and its variations as trademarks with the relevant offices. This will not only protect our brand, but also allows it to be licensed for use by other operaators, more news on this soon.
I am currently performing jury service at my local Crown Court. Its the first time I have been involved in any way in court and I have to say its a colossal waste of time and resources. THe first day we sat there from 9 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon. Then we were sworn in on a case of assault. After spending 2 hours listening to evidence it was adjourned for the day. Upon taking our seats the next morning, the judge apologised, but informed us that the defence council had put forward a motion to have the trial dismissed due to lack of direct evidence. The judge agreed with this, made me the foreman of the jury and ordered me to acquit the defendant. Now, both prosecuting and defending councils had copies of the witness statements, could this motion to dismiss not have been put forward at the start of the trial and saved everyone half a day?
We were then sent home and told to ring an anserphone for our start time on the third day, upon doing this we were informed that we werent needed on the third day and to ring after 4pm to find out if we needed to come in on the fourth day, mesmerising stuff, just like being on Law and Order, and for anyone who doesn't know me that was sarcasm!
As 2011 draws to a close, thankfully our hectic work load eases off. The income is nice but keeping up an average of 3 events a day takes a toll. Tomorrow were off up to Edinburgh to operate one of our giant snow globes on Princess Street for a few days. Arthur's Crew has been in charge of it since November but we are giving them a short break. The fabled Edinburgh Hogmanay party begins tomorrow so its something we are all looking forward too.
On a business front we have a number of new websites being prepared for launch, in the main they are not promoting anything new, its more of an additional marketing drive for existing products. Looking at the jobs we already have booked for 2012, our photography services are once again making a surprise showing with quite a few paparazzi and photo booth jobs already in place, necessitating at least one additional photo booth being built.
On a recent job at John Lewis store in Newcastle Upon Tyne, (a paparazzi job following lookalike David and Victoria Beckhams around the store) I dropped my daughter off at my parents in Middlesbrough, then proceeded up the A19 to Testo's roundabout, turned left there and took the road past Howarth Metro into Newcastle. Anyway, a couple of mile before I reached the Metro terminal, I passed a number of people running up the road, a couple on each side of the dual carriageway, I did wonder if it was some sort of road race or something, and thought it was a pretty dangerous if it was. Everything became clear however about half a mile further on, a horse was galloping full tilt the wrong way up the Eastbound carriageway! I didn't fancy the handlers chances of catching it, they were a good half mile behind and it was going like the clappers.
December is shaping to be a heck of a month, as we have just picked up 2 block bookings from shopping centres, one in London with Chestnuts and Hot Pimms, the other in the Midlands with chestnuts, mulled wine and mince pies. Added to a number of bookings for Tesco stores, again with chestnuts, mulled wine and minced pies and they add up to over 2 dozen bookings from those 3 clients alone.
We have just resprayed our stock of hot roast chestnut carts, we now have 5 gas powered carts and 3 electric powered allowing us to cover most eventualities, although one of our Scottish based clients that usually hires 2 carts for a couple of weeks has told us they would like 4 this year so we may need to construct another couple to meet the demand.
At least 1 additional photo booth is on the cards as we have a number of dates for next summer when there are multiple booths booked out on the same day. Also we have just put together a long range wi-fi based touch screen system allowing us to shoot images which are automatically transferred back to the system and can be printed out with a single touch of the screen.
VOSA pulled our new Citroen Dispatch in at a Glasgow check point on Saturday, but a quick check round and look at the diesel being used saw us on our way, one of the benefits of buying new is I don't expect to have major faults during the 3 years we will be keeping the van. The other older Dispatch is a 57 plate 2008 model, that is now slated to be replaced sometime next year and with the sterling service we have had I think it will be another Citroen.
We have added a number of other fun services to our photography portfolio, these are listed below;
Photo Sketch Our software is used to convert the captured images into pencil sketches.
Photo Morph The images are altered using morphing software to give an exaggerated caricature style look.
Digital Makeover Using the latest in Anthropics software this one takes an image and quickly turns it into an airbrushed photo worthy of a magazine cover. Some of the options are a little much and include facial sculpting, but if you stick to the lower settings it gives fantastic results.
We supplied a couple of games units to the print works in Manchester for a Holloween event. 4000 drunken students dressed as vampires, monsters etc meant I was expecting a hectic night, but as it turned out it was quite enjoyable.
On the home front, I've just had a letter pop through the postbox informing me that I have been selected for Jury service at Doncaster Crown Court, upto 2 weeks in the middle of December, usually our busiest month, so that is just bleeding fantastic, hopefully my application for a deferral will be granted.
Last weekend we nipped up to Glasgow for an event in the Polo Lounge, a new venue for us and a bit unusual, the decor was like a scene from a Sherlock Holmes film. On the way up there we came across the usual collection of messages displayed on the motorway matrix signs, "Don't Drive Tired", "Don't Use Your Phone," etc. The last one however was a new one on me, "Drive Efficiently". ????What the hell does that mean, it conjures up images of a dystopian future society, with a black clad Judge Dredd type figure, pulling you over and sentencing you to a prison term for not driving efficiently, knowing the British government, it will be a precursor to on the spot fines for non efficient driving of a motor vehicle.
Out of the many additional services and games we have launched this year, the photography part of the company is probably the fastest growing, with us picking up regular work from a number of sources. The paparazzi service has been the favourite so far, our photographers dress as archetypal press photographers from days of yesteryear (long macs and trilby hats), utilising Canon DSLR cameras they take unlimited snaps of the guests at an event, these are then uploaded to our secure server and the guests can download them free of charge.
We have taken this a step further with our new Paparazzi Instants service, our intrepid 'Paps' can now come with compact hip mounted dye sub printers, powered by battery they can dispense professional laboratory quality prints in our 60 seconds, this means the guests can now take a print home with them. Once the pre paid package of prints has been exhausted, the paps continue snapping as normal with all of their images uploaded to our server after the event.
Paparazzi Remotes
A second variation on this is our remote service designed for exhibitions and sales events, instead of hip mounted printers, our intrepid paps have wifi enabled cameras, these transmit to a base station which then prepares the print, adds branding or effects such as a corporate logo, then prints it out automatically, this allows guests or visitors to collect their own print offering you the opportunity to inform them of the services your company can offer.
This can be extended by adding 42inch plasma screen stations which also capture the images as they are taken and adds them to an ongoing slide show, imagine having a number of these placed around an exhibition displaying a range of images taken, all with your corporate logo emblazoned across the print, whilst at the same time our paparazzi photographers are handing cards out to the guests inviting them to collect a free print from your stand!
A stunning concept that we have just added to our portfolio of photography services is our range of Giant Snow Globes. These are giant inflatable domes that are like a supersized version of the little snowglobes that you used to pick up in tourist shops, you know the kind, you shake them up and the glitter inside gives the effect of a snowstorm.
Anyway ours are bigger, much much bigger, upto 21ft in diameter in fact. This not only alows four or five adults to enter, but also lets us add props to the interior such as a Decorated Christmas tree, or an inflatable snowman.
It is envisaged that the globes should be a good line over Christmas, we can supply them to our corporate clients, and take photographes of the guests inside, these can then be uploaded in the usual way to our secure server for free downloading, or we can set up a complete print solution allowing images to be purchased and printed immediately.
Over the summer we have added a number of new games to our portfolio, many of these are designed to move away from the purely funfair type attractions and broaden our appeal.
Gold Cup Racing Game For Hire
Gold cup is a variation on the Kentucky Derby style Game, only instead of having to roll a ball into holes to move your horse you sit astride a hobby horse and simulate a galloping motion, once we have chance to shoot a video clip I'll post it here as it is hilarious to watch.
Wii Games Consoles For Hire
The Nintendo Wii probably needs no description, it has been a gaming hit since its launch. we offer it with a quad charging system, plasma screen display or projection screen for larger format gaming and an operator to help run the games. With the wide variation of titles available for the console there is sure to be something suitable for any type of event.
Inflatable Horse Racing
Another game that really needs a video posting, upto 4 riders sit astride the inflatable horses and proceed to race around an inflatable race course, complete with jumps for added mayham.
Giant Operation Game For Hire
Based on the old classic but supersized! You have 60 seconds and 3 lives to remove as many body parts from the patient as you can, a beating heart timer and buzzer add to the fun.
Giant Buzzer
Another long time favourite, move the loop along the wire without touching it to win. This has been around for a long time, but we have taken it to a new dimension at nearly 8 feet long. It can be used with a hand wand, or for team games we have a special hat mounted loop, turning a person into the wand and needing team members with strong arms to move it along the course.
We have just put together a number of special Christmas packages for smaller offices, these are designed to allow a short break to be held in your office, perhaps as a thank you to your staff. Details are available at Office Christmas Party our new mini site.
One of the photography services we launched was our spoof paparazzi photographers. I have been surprised by how many jobs we have picked up, seems lots of people like having their photos taken. One good contract was a chain of bars that are expanding, we are providing services at their launch parties, which make for quite enjoyable evenings.
Whilst we were installing a bar a couple of weeks ago, I received a call from a news agency, seems that a light aircraft had crashed into some houses in Salford and they required a photographer to capture some images, I explained that wasn't really what we did, although Ian who was with me was keen to give it a go! Truth be told I don't think I want to go down the route of snapping people injured and dying regardless of how well it might pay, the spoof service we offer is well rewarded and fun and I think I'll stick to that.
July finished off on the same note as it began, busily. Friday Ian and I were in Blackpool for the launch of the new revolution bar, we were providing paparazzi services in and around the club.
The following day I started the in Chesterfield, finishing around 5pm, nipping the staff back home from that job and picking a camera kit up to provide a Paparazzi and green screen service in Nottingham for a TA Army units wild west themed party. I finished there at midnight and was originally meant to travel to Colchester to help on a job at an army establishment there, but we managed to take extra staff mening I could just head home. I finished my weekend off by travelling upto Lumly castle to provide an ice cream cart at a wedding, that proved to be a nice relaxing job to round the weekend off.
Whilst this was going on, Ian and a couple of staff were providing a bar service to a wedding in Burnley. Part of the service that had been booked was us providing wine for the tables and also champagne for the toast. Ian rang me a little irate about an hour into the event. Seems that on arrival the caterers had asked us for the wine and champagne and then proceeded to use the champagne for the reception drinks due to the fact that they had forgotten their own supplies, to compound matters, they had then denied any knowledge of taking our wine and the bride then thought we had failed to bring the supplies, luckily Ian being a quick thinker managed to get the caterers to admit to using our wine whilst the bride was stood behind them, in Ians words the groom hit the roof and we were expecting reports of seriously injured caterers before the night was out.
Looking back we had a drinks fountain, photo booth, waffle cart, giant scalextric, paparazzi (x3), ice cream, 3 sidestalls, bar service all being operated directly, along with teacups ride, inflatable slide, dodgems, sidestalls being operated on our behalf.
Certain weekends seem to attract higher numbers of bookings than others, July 4th is usually one, but this year we have had July 4th, 16th, 23rd and next Saturday the 30th is very similar.
On 23rd we ended up with 4 main jobs being run directly, and a number of others that were soley down to sub contracters. From our main office we had hot dogs, candy floss and popcorn going up to a wedding at Bishop Auckland, Candy floss going over to an event at Cambridge University, A Pimms cart off down to Aylesbury near Oxford and Dodgems, Trampolines, Train Ride, Crazy Golf, Bar, Ice Cream and Candy floss a short hop to Newark for an event we have supplied attractions to the last 3 years.
We also had dodgems at Oxford, Cambridge and Northolt.
I've struggled the last month to fit the time in to write anything on this blog, over 60 events in 30 days meant we had a punishing schedule, its only slightly less hectic over the next month, but I have a few days off before the next round of jobs.
The images below are from the 450 year celebrations of the Queen Elizabeth endowed school in Mansfield where we provided some Victorian style attractions.
Over the last few years we have carried out that many jobs that most of them are now second nature. Setting up most of our equipment has become an almost automatic procedure, and at many events there is very little conversation needed as everyone tends to know what they are doing.
Unfortunately every now and then something unforeseen throws a spanner in the works. On Saturday night I was supplying one of our new photo booths to an event in Harrogate. Now when we had the unit designed and built, I ensured it was capable of fitting into a standard size lift. The job at Harrogate was on the fifth floor, which knowing they had 2 lifts wasn't going to be a problem. However I hadn't realised that the architect of the building didn't like the look of the lifts, and surrounded them with a wooden frame, which had the effect of reducing the height of the lift entrance, to around half an inch less than I needed to slide the booth sections into. Try as I might, I couldn't fit it in.
Now the hotel manager was very obliging lending me 3 of his staff to manhandle it up the stairs. Which even that wasn't as simple as it sounds because the entrance to the stairwell between floors 3 and 4 was too tight to use. What we had to do was manhandle it up 3 interior flights of stairs, then take it outside the building and up the fire escape (resulting at one point with 4 of us trapped on the fire escape due to the door we had just exited shutting and locking itself, and no one being inside to open the door we needed to re enter the hotel).
Eventually I had everything in position and the booth operational, at which point the manager remarked that he could only lend me 1 member of staff for the derig due to the others having finished their shift by then!
The staff members we had who could drive through to help me were already on jobs. In the end I rang a friend Graham who came through from Bradford. After much huffing and puffing, being trapped again on the fire escape, skinned knuckles, bruised knees and pulled muscles we managed to have everything out and be on the road about two and a half hours after the booth closed many thanks Graham. In future I will ensure we only book jobs that have lifts without nice decorative surrounds!
On the bright side the booth system we designed has performed flawlessly and it is a system that once turned on pretty much runs itself.
Sunday saw me have an easy day (thankfully as I was sore all over), and I am now finalising the design of our new battle tank system, which will allow 2 teams to engage in tank battles using an infra red battle system, remote controlled Sherman and Tiger tanks, all played out on a portable battlefield that will contain buildings, trees, anti tank systems and a number of German PAK40 and American 57mm anti tank guns that can detect and shoot the tanks as they pass by.
I was back in my native North East at the weekend for a 2 day Islamic event in the Benwell area of Newcastle. Saturday I couldn't attend as it was a female only day, but I spent a pleasant Sunday there. It was only a small scale event with candy floss and popcorn, a helter skelter, toyset and inflatable slide/bouncy castle.
Saturday, (and Sunday for some) we had a number of smaller events on the go. At the Parrs Wood Leisure complex we were there with 3 small sidestalls for 2 days, Jans Conference Centre in Blackburn we supplied Ice Cream, Candy Floss and Popcorn on 3 seperate carts. We had a Candy Floss job on for L'Oreal Cosmetics in Leeds, and a candy floss/popcorn job on a single cart at a wedding in the Wirall. A few images below from some of these.
At the weekend we were in the rather nice area of Chelmsford, (We were also in Peterborough, Newark and Durham which is about average for a Saturday at this time of the year) with a couple of sidestalls and a Ferris Wheel. The wheel was one we haven't used before, the owner of the original wheel is unfortunately ill and was beginning a course of treatment a few days before the event. He asked if he could arrange cover, which is something I don't usually like, but I trust him and let him go ahead. The result was one of the nicest wheels I have seen in a long time, a lot of it had obviously just been repainted, but even the parts which hadn't were exceptionally clean.
I have been to Chelmsford for probably a dozen events last year, but they all seemed to be rather hectic affairs, this time having travelled down the night before from another event, we had more time to look around. One thing which stood out was the general cleanliness. Even as the event finished there was no litter about.
The first of our new photo booths has passed its final test and is now fully operational. Designed and built to enable us to offer a fully customisable system for the corporate market. We have an additional 2 booths on order, these are being constructed by a builder in the South of the country, whilst we will fit them with our own control systems, printers and cameras.
The system has the following specifications;
Sony Professional Dye Sublimation Print System Canon Digital SLR Camera System Integrated Touch Screen Control System Video Booth Functionality In Built Wireless Video Transmitter (Allowing projectors and large screen displays to display images from the booth) Fully Integrated Proximity Marketing System (Designed to deliver electronic flyers, ringtones, pdf catalogues) In Built WiFI Hotspot (Allowing images to be uploaded to clients facebook accounts)
We are also having a remote connection facility added, this will allow us to take control of the booth via the internet and hopefully sort any problems out from our base, it will also allow us to alter print settings and layouts if required.
February, which is usually our quietest month (although this year turned out to be a busy one), saw us managing to fit a 3 day break to Amsterdam in. I have been there in the past both when I was single, and also spent part of my honeymoon there whilst touring Europe.
As is normal nowadays, everything was booked online a few weeks before, with the booking system informing me that actual airline tickets are no longer issued, we instead have E tickets. Anyway a couple of days before we were due to fly I discovered that my other half's E ticket had been issued in her maiden name, and knowing that airlines are particularly picky about names since 9/11 I rang our carriers, KLM straight up. "No problem Mr Moody, said a pleasant Dutch voice, we can change names quite easily." was followed by "Oh, sorry we can't change your ticket". Upon inquiring as to why, I was told that since I had booked them through a travel agent, the agent would have to make the name change request. I duly rang the agents to do this. (No problem Mr Moody, that's quite easy, please hold the line", was again followed by "Oh, we can't do it". The reason this time turned out to be the fact that it was Saturday, and the KLM office which deals with name changes doesn't work weekends.
SO we ended up being told that we should get to the airport early, and the ticket desk there should change the name for us. On the morning we were flying we arrived bright and early only to be met with a queue of about 80 people! We informed an airport attendant of our predicament and asked if there was anyway of getting the ticket sorted sooner, upon asking to see our ticket, his reply was "I wouldn't worry about your ticket mate, that flight was canceled last night", turned out that the plane we were supposed to be on didn't land because of fog.
Five bloody hours were in that queue for. Mid way through it the rumour seemed to be that the next available flight was the day after.Not wanting to lose a day of a short break, I got my laptop out, connected to KLM's site and booked three seats on a later flight, reasoning that I would worry about refunds later. After booking the seats I was informed that I would have to pay for them at the ticket desk, so I would still have to stand in the bloody queue.
Anyway as we reached nearly to the front of the queue I discovered that the ticket agent was in fact booking people on the same plane I had just reserved 3 seats on, great it looked like I would have 6 seats on the flight, but at least one of the 6 would be in my wife's current name. I duly reached the front of the queue to meet the ticket agent, a short stern faced lady who looked like she would make a good concentration camp guard in the movie industry. I was just about to launch into a tirade about waiting 5 bloody hours and not being informed of cancelled flights when a young man dropped a bundle of papers on her desk and exclaimed innocently "These need taking care of when you get a minute", the look she gave him would have welded steel from 40 paces, and her reply of "You know what you can do with those Stephen, shove them up your bloody arse!" seemed to modify my temper somewhat. As she turned that steely gaze upon me I gave her my best smile, what I hoped was a slightly pleading look in my eyes, and informed her that not only did we need our flights sorting out, but my wife's ticket was in the wrong name. Her eyes narrowed, her shoulders tightened and a visible shudder ran through her, taking a hold or herself she sighed loudly, stared towards the heavens, closed her eyes for a long moment then sorted everything out for us.
Amsterdam turned out much as I remember it, the Dutch must be the most laid back and pleasant race in Europe, and we spent a pleasant 3 days strolling around the city, with a short trip to the seaside town of Vollendam thrown in. THe first tram we boarded into the city centre, I asked the conductor for the price of the ticket (most locals use pre paid cards much like the oyster system in London), he just smiled and told me not to worry and get of when we were ready. The next day having some experience of the tram system, we boarded the tram outside our hotel and I asked for 3 day passes. The lady conductor smiled sweetly and apologised for having run out of them. "It is not a problem", she said, "Just buy them from a ticket machine when you get off". Can you imagine that, over here it would go like this, "3 Day passes please", "Can't do that mate I've run out" "Oh, well can I buy them when I get off at the other end" "No sorry can't do that you need a ticket to travel" "Oh well give me 3 tickets please" "Sorry, just told you I've run out!"
Mid way through I had a headache coming on so thought I would nip into a chemist for some pain relief. What greeted me must have been one of the barest shelves of painkillers I have ever seen, about the size of a television set, it contained pretty much only what you could buy from a late night garage in this country. Upon inquiring about something a bit stronger I was informed that I would need a doctors prescription. "So let me get this straight," I said, "I can walk into anyone of a million coffee shops and buy cannabis or marijuana, without any problems, but if I want something stronger than 400mg of Ibuprofen I need a prescription?". "That's pretty much it", replied the chemist. "Strange country", "Yep" came the retort, along with that pleasant Dutch laid back smile.
Ready to come home, we reached Schipol airport, and found that they have a fully automated system to book in and be issued with your boarding card. I entered our E ticket number, only to learn that I was booked on the flight along with our daughter, but not my wife. It made me think of a recent case where an immigration official had waved his wife off at the airport in London, went back to work and added her to the known terrorist list of people banned from entering the UK, and then proceeded to live the single life until he was found out 4 years later, in the meantime his wife had spent 4 years stuck in Pakistan unable to find out why she wasn't allowed to board a flight back to England!
As it turned out, because of the name change we had made at Bradford, my wife had received a separate reservation, which no one had bothered to inform me of.
We decided towards the end of the year that it was time to revamp some of our older sites, as a result our Main funfair rides hire site has a new look. Purely by chance after we uploaded the new site, I happened to be on the wayback machine, which captures and archives snapshots of sites going back about 10 years. I found a couple of images of our site, both the version we have just replaced and the original site we started with in 2004. They are pictured below.
For those who used to visit our photo gallery pages, these have now been moved to our JARM Amusements facebook page and they will be updated over the course of the coming season.
We ordered a fair bit of equipment from a USA based supplier recently. Now the items when they were dispatched were allocated a tracking number to enable us to track their whereabouts. Whilst keeping an eye on their progress, something unusual came to light. The goods were dispatched from a company based on the West coast of America, they were then shipped across America to arrive on the East coast, a distance of some 2800 miles. They were then transported from there to Stansted airport, roughly 3000 miles giving a total distance of some 5800 miles give or take, a process which took the grand total of 2 days.
This is where it becomes puzzling, since arriving at Stansted they have travelled to Tamworth, a distance of 120 miles, and how long has this taken, 2 days! In the exact same time period that the Yanks can transport my parcels 5800 miles, the British have managed to move them 120. Getting the calculator out I have managed to determine that parcels being transported in the American system travel at an average speed of 120 miles per hour. They then hit Britain and decelerate to 2.5 miles per hour, which means the Americans can move them 48 times faster than we can. Perhaps we should let the Americans come over here and run our parcel network.
As part of a raft of new products we are launching for 2011, we have just turned our Photo Crazy website on. We supply a lot of equipment to themed events, and have been asked to provide photography services on a number of occasions, so inline with our policy of adding additional services where possible, we now own a considerable amount of expensive photography equipment, along with backdrops and studio lighting.
Rather than trying to compete with the many excellent portrait photographers that are available on the event circuit, we are offering a web based service, where for a fixed fee we will take and upload an unlimited number of images. To add additional value, we are photographing our clients against a green backdrop, this allows us to use sophisticated software, as used by Hollywood special effects photographers, to replace the green screen with a range of backgrounds, so for example at a World War 2 themed event, we can place the guests in the same picture as Churchill, or a spitfire or perhaps a Sherman tank.
Our preferred method of communications tends to be email, as this allows us to sort a quote out and supply in depth details to possible clients, along with images and other documentation. We are however cogniscent of the fact that over the last few years there has been an upsurge in instant messaging services. As a result we are now trialling instant messaging on a couple of our websites to see if it is a convenient method for some of our clients to use.
For anyone interested our usernames are as follows;
Blackberry Messenger . 234F8129
Windows Live Messenger . jm@tempus-fugit-bars.co.uk
Google Talk . jarm691@gmail.com
We are also considering Whats App for the growing number of Iphone users.
we recently supplied a mulled wine and hot dog cart to an event in London. This was organised by a bunch of celebrity mums including Yasmin Le Bon and Louise Redknapp. I started the day by nearly walking into Yasmin Le Bon, and ended it by her just stopping short of driving into me.
One of our new recruits, Ray, pictured below(in his apron and plastic antenna) spotted someone he recognised part way through the day, "Look Oliver Lance", he exclaimed. "Who the heck is he", I said, thinking it was some rugby player or sports personality. "She's off one of them Australian soaps", said Ray I wondered why she had a blokes name and asked Ray, "she hasn't", was the reply, "She's called Oliver Lance"
Turned out he was talking about Holly Valance! You can take the guy out of Barnsley, but you can't take Barnsley out of the guy.
It turned out a quite enjoyable day with amongst others Melanie Blatt, Trinny Woodhall, Christina Estrada all making an appearance.
We recently had a client brief to provide one of our Absinthe carts, but with a more Bohemian feel, it was intended for a Mouin Rouge themed party. We took one of our standard Victorian style carts, added drapes, a velvet cover for the counter, candles, flowers etc and came up with a pretty nice theme. The client was over the moon, and I think we will make it the standard theme for Absinthe carts. I ended up dressed in a period costume to serve the drink, and luckily I had read up on the history of Absinthe, as everyone seemed to want to know more about the drink, the ritual involved in its preparation also went down a storm.
For a number of years I have used various examples of Microsoft windows phones, usually made by HTC to run my business whilst out of the office. Around 12 months ago I was seduced by the hype surrounding the Apple Iphone and switched to that. Almost immediately I was struck by many of the missing features I had taken for granted from my old phones. It wouldn't accept business cards from other phones, you couldn't set up individual call diverts, you had to pay to use it as a modem on a laptop and so on.
I persevered with it, but the longer I owned it the more apparent its shortcomings became, Internet access was so slow as to make it unusable most of the time, the battery rarely lasted much past teatime, the onscreen keyboard was very poor, and most frustrating of all, the email system only worked about 50 percent of the time.
Anyway with us having a busy season and me spending most of my time on the road, these shortcomings began to cause major problems for me. I rang Orange to see what could be done, only to discover that their customer service is very much like the Carlsberg adverts, its most probably the worst customer service in the world. I was continually passed around departments, I was told blatant lies on numerous occasions when I would be promised a call back and never receive one (5 times in one particular week).
A week ago I received a leaflet in the post from Orange. When I pulled it from the envelope I thought for a moment that Orange was finally admitting just how bad the phone actually was, the cover of the leaflet is pictured below;
What it actually says is, "Nothing loses business like losing your Iphone", but my thumb had obscured the additional word. Anyway after a great deal of pain, Orange have now agreed to take back my Iphone, cancel my contract and allow me to choose a new phone. Although the Jiffy bag that was being sent out to me last Thursday still hasn't arrived, so it could well be another lie from Orange customer services.
At the minute I am torn between either a blackberry of some sort, or one of the new Windows 7 phones. Technically the Windows phone seems superior, but what I really need is reliable email services, and this is the Blackberry's strongest point, so I may well go down that road.
We supplied a range of attractions at the weekend to an event at St Helens rugby club. It was to mark the end of their old stadium as they are having a new stadium constructed. Anyway the event went off quite well, if a little quiet. When it came to the derig, we were bobbing along nicely until some short fat little git decided he was going to show everyone he was the boss by informing us that if we didn't have everything out in within 5 minutes he was going to lock up and we would have to come back the next day.
As it happened we were almost finished and with a sizeable crew didn't really have to put too much effort into finishing. One lady who was operating other equipment however, found that not only had the short arsed little prat locked up before she was finished, but he had actually locked her in!! With the result that although they had a 2 and a half hour journey ahead of them, it took a good twenty minutes to find someone to release her. I wonder what it is with little people and power.
The bar business is picking up steam nicely, we have made a few mistakes and its been a steep learning curve, but we are finding things easier now. A lot of effort has been put into not only making our bars easier to operate, but also to increasing the dispensing capacity. The first of our mass dispense units arrive next month, each one capable of dispensing upto 1500 pints per hour, so we are ready to move up a gear into the small festival and outdoor show markets, as well as larger private events. Details are here.
For some reason we have picked up a number of bookings from NewZealand based companies. all for our slush carts and all at exhibitions lasting 2 to 3 days. I wonder if we should open an office over there, I quite fancy spending my winters somewhere warmer.
We are also adding a new game to our lineup, consisting of remote controlled World War 2 tanks which combat each other using infra red beams on a portable battle field, this one will be big boys toys I think, and is intended to be one of the offerings on our new teambuilding website which will be launched in the new year. We are combining with a couple of other established agencies to provide a series of teambuilding games to tap into that market.
I was doing quite well this season in so much as I hadn't added too many new lines to our portfolio. Well I did launch a mobile bar business, added Belgian Waffles, and Marquee hire, oh and pick and mix, Crazy golf and remote control boats, but that was all (unless you count the Pimms stall and Jagermeister cart, but I think they can be lumped with the Bar services).
Due to demand however we are now adding 3 new lines this week, these will consist of Nachos, Jacket Potato cart and Chipstix (a potato cut into a long spiral and then deep fried and seasoned).
The first of these ready is our new jacket potato carts, we are using the Queen Victoria Potato Bakers as the standard potato oven due the their good looks, ease of use and the fact that they fit in nicely with our Victorian style carts. The Nachos and Chipstix should be ready by the end of the week.
Just a quick note this one to say that we now offer a Crazy Golf Hire service for corporate and private events nationwide, further details can be found by clicking, Crazy Golf Hire Services.
When I used to spend a bit more time visiting Europe, I gradually picked up a smattering of German, and a little Dutch. Now on examining these languages in became apparent that they contained a lot more structure than English seemed to, with the result that they appeared to be more precise.
At first I felt this was an unnecessary complication, but on a recent visit to the Eastern Counties I began to appreciate the logic behind it. We had a number of items at the event, but for various reasons, I ended up manning the ice cream cart. Now as the day wore on we ended up with only 2 flavours left, vanilla and pistachio. I thought that this limited choice would speed things up, but what seemed to happen was innumerable conversations along the following lines;
Customer "Hello, what flavours do you have left ?"
Me "Pistachio and vanilla"
Customer "Do you have any chocolate?"
Me "No only Pistachio and Vanilla"
Customer "What about Strawberry"
Me "No we only have PISTACHIO and VANILLA"
Customer "OK I will just take the mint "
Me through clenched teeth "The mint, sir, happens to be Pistachio, that is why when you asked what flavours we had left, I answered Pistachio and Vanilla, if in fact the Pistachio was indeed mint, I would have answered when asked ,Mint and Vanilla, but the fact that I informed you the available choice was Pistachio and Vanilla, should give you a clue to the fact that the green ice cream is in fact Pistachio and not mint!"
Customer "Oh I will just take Vanilla then"
I wonder what it is about the English that renders a simple explanation so bewildering to some sections of the country
We have been to busy lately for me to do much posting, our regular business is tickling along nicely, and the bar business is picking up work at a steady rate. The bar jobs at the minute don't seem to result in much profit, as everyone we do seems to require additional; equipment or extra bar sections, with the result that we now have 3 complete portable bars, numerous dispensers, cooling equipment, glasses etc. We have also just decided to add two multiple dispense units to our lineup, these allow 8 pints each to be poured at the same time, with a combined throughput of 3000 pints per hour, so are ideal for larger events and smaller festivals.
When we first started and was operating on a limited budget, we frequently had problems with equipment failures and vehicle breakdowns. As we grew and ended up in a position to buy better equipment, and also put back up systems in place we found that things seemed to run a lot more smoothly.
However the law of averages caught up with us the other day, we had quite a busy schedule, calling at a small village in Surrey to apply 125 chair covers and sashes and set up a chocolate fountain, then on to Sevenoaks to set a number of stalls and a couple of catering carts up, back to the first venue to drop two members of staff off, then I continued on to Walton on Thames to operate a candy floss and popcorn cart. As soon as I finished I derigged everything and shot back to the first venue with the intention of picking my staff up to travel home to Yorkshire, grab a couple of hours sleep, load the van up with the rest of the equipment for the Sevenoaks job and set back off down South.
Everything was going great guns when a bang, signalled that I had a tyre blown out, 'great, just what I wanted on a lane in the middle of nowhere, a tyre change.' In time I ended up wishing I was changing a tyre, because when I crawled under the back of the van I discovered the spare wheel missing (it was a hire van). I rang the owner and ot him out of bed, "ring the AA he said, the van is covered", trouble is when I explained the problem they informed me that under their terms of service, not having a spare wheel meant that I wasn't covered. Rang John again, "Ring a tyre firm he said and bill me". An hour later after ringing every number I could find on the internet I rang John again. After an exchange of ideas, he informed me that he was setting off with a spare wheel, wonderful, the three of us only had to sit and wait in the van whilst John covered the 216 miles to us.
Now before John set off he had to nip up to our place and pick up the items I needed for the next day, this included a striker (test your strength machine). On our striker the base unit is made from 20mm steel plate to give it the weight needed to remain stationary whilst being hammered. The base unit is kept on a small set of wheel which allow it to be moved about the yard. When John and my other half lifted it into the van, John had not realised that the wheels were not part of the structure and left his fingers underneath when they dropped it into the back of the van. My wife rang me to tell me that John was running around the yard squealing about his fingers. She wasn't in the mood for sympathy and told him that if he went to the hospital they would only tape his fingers up, and she offered to lend him a roll of tape to ensure he got on his way quicker.
When he arrived at our end the first thing he did was show me his fingers, which by then were black and blue and quite swollen. Bloody well serves him right for removing the spare wheel.
As part of our ongoing commitment to offer a complete service from event management through to catering, games, rides, bars and security we have just launched our latest venture. Details can be found at www.mini-marquee-hire.com
We have just ordered and are awaiting delivery of a range of marquee solutions including lighting, flooring, heating and interior drapes. The intention is to build it up into a standalone business over the next couple of years. It might happen organically, but I am looking at 2 or 3 established businesses that are for sale, and if any of them fit in with what we want then that might be the road we go down. The initial drive behind the marquee was the fact that we have negotiated deals to attend a number of music festivals, an equestrian event and possibly a Pride event with our mobile bars. Looking at these events we felt that we could do with a sheltered bar area for the guests. After talking to a number of marquee hire companies we realised that hiring a marquee for a dozen days or so was more expensive than purchasing one, and once the decision had been made to purchase, I immediately decided that I didn't want expensive kit only being used occasionally and so the new venture was born.
Over the next couple of months we will be launching a range of new services. The first of these is a tie up with another operator to launch a climbing wall hire service. The initial website is up and running, but to be truthful its still a little basic, however it will be expanded over the coming months. It can be found at www.climbing-wall-hire.com
We rack up quite a few miles throughout the year, our Jaguar Estate car piling on nearly 70,000 in a little over 15 months. Upto now we have hired vans in, partly because we have an excellent deal with a local van hire company, and partly because we didn't want the rapidly depreciating drain on our books that any vehicle represents. However since our acquisition of Chocolate Experience, the chocolate fountain hire company, we have had a need for a smaller, lighter type van than those we have been hiring. Traipsing down to Norwich in a jumbo long wheelbase high roof transit averaging about 26 to the gallon wasn't really suitable when you had around half a dozen smallish boxes in the back. The van hire company has a single Transit Connect, but this tended to be out on long term hire all the time.
Anyway, we have just acquired a Citroen Dispatch specifically for these smaller jobs. Its a little larger than a Connect, but smaller than a transit, and has 3 seats which is an added bonus. We haven't had the van long enough to make a decision on how reliable it is, but on our first trip to London and back it averaged 39 miles to the gallon, which is only about 6 MPG behind our Jag, and well in front of the Transits we use. The Dispatch is identical to the Peugeot Expert and Fiat Scudo, the only difference being the Dispatch is fitted with Traffic Master navigation. This is a GPS system with a monochrome screen about the size of a credit card, and I was doubtful as to its utility, being more used to the widescreen full colour Garmins we have been using (although with their terrible back up service the Garmins are being replaced with Tom Toms shortly). However in use the system seems to work as well as any other we have used, also it links to the Traffic Master system and routes you around traffic delays. It also gives me the ability to prepare routes online and send them to the satnav system, so I can reprogram a staff members destination on the fly. The system must also be the most polite navigation system on the market, it doesn't tell you to take an exit on the roundabout, it asks if you would "Please take the exit".
We recently installed a bar at an event for a major motor industry manufacturer and a games console company. This was a pre paid job with us supplying a fixed package of drinks, including cocktails and one of our Jagermeister tap machines. The event went stormingly with everyone in fancy dress and the room buzzing. Sabine Schmitz (the German female racing driver who raced Jeremy Clarkson around the Nurburgring race track, with Jeremy in a Jaguar S type, and Sabine in a Transit Van, she lost by only 9 seconds. Ms Schmitz and a cohort of German friends managed to consume our stocks of Jagermeister, before moving onto frozen Margarita cocktails with an added shot of Vodka, something our cocktail mixologist insisted you couldn't do, but the Schmitz party proving you obviously could!
As January draws to a close, I've been looking at our sales leads. Last year we posted an incredible 209% increase in leads during January. My target this year was a modest 10% increase as I don't think it is possible to keep growing at the rate of 200% per year. As it turns out we have posted a 95% increase on last year, which equates to almost 500% up on the year before! Chocolate Experience has added some of the increase as last January we didn't own that business, but stripping that out we are still some 85% up on last year.
Everything is in place for the bar business, including a number of confirmed bookings for weddings. After looking into the market I noticed that there are plenty of bar companies offering complete packages for events with 100 plus guests, but very few catering for the smaller 30-40 guests event. We are quite happy providing services to events at both ends of the scale, and as a result have launched a new microBAR service offering draught, spirits, wines, alcopops and soft drinks on one of our Victorian style carts, or one of our new contemporary illuminated bars at a fixed price. Details are available at microBAR Package. This uses one of our new european designed integrated draught chiller/dispensers along with bar butlers to hold the optice and some mini wine coolers allowing us to provide everything in a much reduced footprint.
We also sold the square helter skelter just before Christmas. Unfortunately we had to borrow it back for the 4 days of Stockton Christmas festival and I ended up having to build it up and pull it down after I had thought I had seen the last of it. Whilst at Stockton, we received the snow ahead of the rest of the country, with an incredible amount falling within the space of a couple of hours. On the final day whilst taking the ride down, I discovered that the chutes contained a thick layer of ice, not good when you have to walk up them. I eventually used boiling water to pour onto the chutes and defrost them, this lasted around 5 minutes after which the water cooled down and refroze and we had to repeat the process.
Once we had the ride dismantled and taken back to a nearby yard for storage (as I didn't fancy driving it on the roads in blizzard conditions), all that remained was to wait for better weather and return the ride to its new owner. As it turned out that took nearly a month, as everytime the weather in Yorkshire was ok it was bad weather in the North East, and vice versa. Anyway the ride is now safely back at Rotherham and off my hands again.
We tend to add additional lines to our portfolio in a number of different ways. Sometimes, as is the case with our new mobile bar service, our existing clients ask us for it, with others such as the milk shake cart I think it has some potential, buy the equipment and then set about winning work for it, and with the Chocolate Fountain company we acquired it was a mixture of luck, being in the right place at the right time, and the fact that someones wife had decided to have an affair causing her husband to sell us the business.
In addition to the aforementioned bar business we have just launched, we also added the option of a specialist JagerMeister bar. We have now added by demand a Baileys drinks fountain to our , and an Absinthe bar, simply because I like the ritual involved in preparing the drink.
For those who have yet to sample the delights of the Green Fairy, as Absinthe is commonly called, it is a herbal spirit, which according to popular legend was invented in Switzerland by Dr. Pierre Ordinaire for use as a medicinal remedy. A mistaken, although widespread belief that the drink had strong hallucinogenic properties led to it being banned in many countries in the early 1900's, although surprisingly Britain didn't ban it, making it one of the few occasions we were less stringent when applying bans than our Euro cousins.
In the early 1990's the drink made a comeback and the ban was gradually rescinded. The preparation of the drink is a ritual in itself. Absinthe can be anything up to about 89% proof, it is not intended to be drunk neat, (some people do drink it that way, but some people also drink meths or industrial alcohol), and needs to be diluted with water, not only to lower the alcohol percentage, but also because this releases different flavours and aromas which are otherwise locked into the neat liquid. To prepare it, a shot of Absinth is added to a glass, an Absinthe spoon is placed across the top of the glass, these are usually decorated spoons, which are perforated to allow liquid to drip through them, a sugar cube is placed on the spoon, and a small amount of iced water drizzled onto the cube, this is then left to dissolve and drip through to the Neat spirit. After this more iced water is slowly drizzled through the spoon and into the cup, the Absinthe is louched, which refers to a process where the clear green liquid is gradually turned into a paler, cloudy substance due to the various oils being released and mixed into the water. It is then drunk!
The weather here was just starting to thaw, when it started to snow again, not heavy but we have had about half an inch since tea time. Arthur hasn't experienced any of this yet due to the fact that he is sunning himself on a beach in Sharm El Sheikh, expect news of war breaking out in Egypt at any moment!
We have also just taken delivery of a batch of wedding chair covers we ordered from America. They were ordered on the 8th of January and we received them on the 13th, a mere 5 days from order to delivery. The same day we ordered them, I ordered some addiitonal equipment for our new bars, this was ordered from an English company, and we are still waiting for it.
On Monday I am due to collect our new bar sections, and a wine cooler allowing bottles of red and white wine to be kept at different temperatures in the same cabinet. We also took delivery of some heavy duty counter mounted corkscrews, you insert the bottle in the bottom, pull the handle and the cork is removed and ejected, if when first examining the mechanism you tip it upside down whilst your finger is inside, it neatly corkscrews through your hand as I found out a couple of days ago!
Well, this time last year saw a massive increase in inquiries for our services. Truth be told I was a little worried about this year as I felt sure things would start to slow down. However they have done just the opposite. Not only are the level of inquiries almost four fold up on last year, but we also have over four times as many booking confirmed for the coming season as we had at the END of January last year. Of course the Chocolate Experience business has helped boost the total, and as the mobile bar business picks up steam I hope that will make a similar contribution.
We have already added two new lines for the coming season, the first is a new pick and mix stand that offers twenty different sweets on the same display, and can carry upto sixty kilograms of confectionery. The other is a stand alone JagerMeister bar. For those who have never tried it, JagerMeister is a liqueur made from various herbs and barks giving a very dark almost licorice tasting drink. It is best served at minus fifteen degrees centigrade, to which end we have acquired JagerMeister Tap Machines for the perfect temperature control. The drink is also served in test tubes giving it another distinguishing feature and providing an interesting talking point at any event.
On our travels to various parts of this island fortress, we meet a weird and wonderful variety of people. This ranges from the incredibly interesting, to the mildly entertaining. Sometimes however we meet complete morons.
Last week in London (one of 4 days there in just over a week), we had directions to the loading bay of a venue. As is often the case, we approached from a different direction, and missed the entrance. When this happens I've found the best course of action is to park up, locate the entrance on foot and then return for the van. I found the loading bay entrance and noticed a security cabin at the side, so I walked in and asked the on duty guard if it was the correct bay, he proceeded to look about 3 feet to my left whilst talking to me, but he seemed to be responding to my questions so I assumed it was me he was talking to. I told him that I would be back in a couple of minutes with a white van, to which he nodded his assent.
As I drove into the entrance of the loading bay, he rushed out of his cabin and signalled to me to stop. He then demanded rather irately as to where do I think I was going? "To deliver to the hotel ", I replied, "You cannot just drive in here like that", said mr security man, "I didn't", I said, "I was in your cabin around 2 minutes ago and you told me to fetch my van in" At this point I could see him concentrating really hard, obviously the synapses in his brain made some sort of connection because he nodded, his next outburst caught me a little off guard though, "You've stopped your van in the entrance, you can't stop there, you have all of the entrance blocked up", WTF, you signalled for me to stop you cretin, although I didn't actually use that term seeing as I was in quite a pleasant mood, "I only stopped there because you shouted stop", this time he was really struggling, obviously the communal brain cell was in the possession of another of his tribe on this particular night, "Well don't do it again" was his parting shot as he lumbered towards his cave!
Anyway the rest of the night was quite a success, with us presenting a range of items including one of our fully landscaped Scalextric tracks. This side of things seems to be picking up speed to the extent that we are investing in a host of new slot car racing products, and have launched a small website to cater for this market, this can be visited at Slot Car Party Hire
I also received my personal alcohol licence from Wakefield council this morning, so I am now authorised to dispense alcoholic beverages, or to authorise their sale. The new outside bar business should launch early in the new year.
Our horror themed props, See HORROR THEMED PARTIES have come in handy with a number of halloween themed bookings. I am out to night in person with a horror themed candy floss cart dispensing green candy floss, so I will post some images here after the event.
I have also been roped in by my daughter to carve her pumpkin. Normally an aunt does it for her, but with her moving away its been left to me. I have to say that at 40 years of age, this is the first pumpkin I have carved, anyway an image of it is below;
As part of our ongoing launch of themed games units we have just launched our World War 2 themed party site. It can be found at WORLD WAR 2 PARTIES As well as a range of games units dressed up with World War 2 props and themed games, we also provide staff in military uniform, digital sound effects units providing a background ambience of dog fights, air raids, marching troops and some of the songs and music from the period.
Our chocolate fountain hire business is picking up speed steadily, we are finding that the chair cover hire side of the operation has more potential than we expected. So much so that we have now added candelabras, lighting and drapes, tea light holders, wishing wells and bay tree hire to the services offered. We will shortly be launching a new website dedicated purely to wedding room decor.
Over the past month we have provided something like 8000 hot dogs to 3 corporate clients. The worst part of this job has been sourcing the bread rolls. The easiest thing to do would be order them from a bakery, but we have found that one of the major supermarket chains is half the price of the wholesale bakers, so logically we have been buying from them.
Unfortunately the said supermarket chain has a bug in their checkout system which means that they cannot input multiple purchases of bread, each individual packet has to be scanned in, or as is more usually the case, a single packet is scanned however many hundred times needed to input the order. The upshot of this is that when I appear in the supermarket the checkout girls begin to say their prayers in the hope that I won't choose their aisle.
Whenever I chance upon a new checkout girl she usually wastes 15 minutes attempting to discover a method of typing in more than one packet, but eventually she will give up like all the rest and accept the inevitable!
Last Monday I was back at school, well not quite, what happened was I had to travel to an examination centre to sit the exam for my personal Alcohol licence in preparation for our soon to be launced mobile bar venture. I was duly placed in a little room and told that I was being monitored by cctv to ensure I did not cheat. I then sat down for a 40 minute exam which took 8 minutes to complete, although I did get 2 questions wrong so perhaps I shouldn't have rushed it.
Our first ever catering cart was a candy floss stall which we were asked to provide to the Coca Cola corporation for 2 events in the Yorkshire area. Within 3 years we had added something like 14 different options to our range of carts and stalls. All through this process we resolutely refused to add one particular item, a chocolate fountain. Everyone agreed they were messy, there is an awful lot of competition out there with fountains and we just plain decided we didn't want them and were not going to have them.
Well now we own a number of full sized and some medium fountains, as well as drinks fountains and a large number of wedding chair covers and various coloured sashes to tie around said chair covers. How did this happen, well we have just acquired the assets, equipment, goodwill and order book of a Norfolk based wedding company. In fairness I hadn't intended acquiring said company, I had travelled to Norfolk to pick up an item of equipment I had agreed to buy. I got on extremely well with the company owner who explained that he was having some personal issues and would like to sell the business as a going concern. After inquiring about the price and doing some sums I decided that it was too good an opportunity to turn down. He had a number of items such as candy floss machines and popcorn machines that we use anyway, the aforementioned fountains which fit in well with our existing wedding operations, and the chair seat covers which we are a little unsure about, but glancing through the order book, seem to be a popular and profitable line. What we will do with the covers is service the existing jobs, see how things go with them and then invest in building them up to compete with the other companies nationwide in that particular market if they look like a good line.
What was the jewel in the crown was the order book and the goodwill with a number of venues that provide a steady stream of work. We intend to run the business as a going concern, separate from our other operations, but obviously with opportunities to cross sell games and rides from our other business providers.
We also acquired a fairly popular website for the company, which we will release details of as soon as we have altered it to contain our contact details etc.Overall, it has boosted the order book for this year by about 25% overnight, and next year by around 250%. I must admit that I like the speed with which a business can be grown by acquisition, so we are now on the look out for a suitable inflatable/rodeo bull provider to acquire and possibly an outside bar company.
In response to repeated requests from some of our corporate clients, we have added a couple of new lines to our portfolio of catering carts. Starting in November we will have a draught beer bar, dispensing various draught beers and lagers. The bar is based on one of our standard gold and white Victorian carts, to which we add a new continental draught beer system which both chills and dispenses the beer straight from the keg. This does away with the need to use a cool room to keep the kegs cold, or a bulky flash chiller and enables us to offer a bar at any venue. Although this service is primarily intended to be a draught drinks service we will also be offering the option of wines and spirits to create a complete mini bar system, further details at Candy Floss Crazy microBARS. This is designed primarily for smaller events, probably up to about 150 people. Larger events would require a full bar service, of which we will be making an announcement later in the month.
We have also just bought a range of drinks fountains, allowing us to offer a top quality drinks fountain hire service for wedding, parties and private corporate events.
This takes our current catering carts options up to around 17 different carts. More than enough to cater for almost any event.
After realising we had a 4 day slot with only a handful of events booked, I decided to take the family on a short break to Rome. Its been a while since any of us had time for a holiday, and this season seemed to have been non stop work so we deserved a break. Rome has the reputation for being one of the most impressive cities in Europe so I was expecting something out of the ordinary. What I found was a mixture of the good, the bad and occasionally indifference, this isn't meant to be a holiday review so I will summerise what I liked and disliked about the trip.
The Good
History
I don't think there is anywhere else in Europe that you could walk along a street of relatively modern buildings, turn a corner and be confronted by a 2000 year old structure, and not just the once, but time and again, Rome seems covered in ruins (although I use the term loosely as some buildings such as the Pantheon are pretty much intact).
The statues and fountains by Bernini or Raphael are utterly breathtaking. A visit to the Vatican or the Sistine Chapel and the wealth of treasures on display are equally awe inspiring.
Entrance Fee Discounts
Most all of the public museums and monuments have a policy of allowing under 18 year olds from the EU free entry. If you are lucky in England you might get a discount for kids, but I wouldn't bank on it.
Discounted Rail Fares
When buying two adult tickets on the Italian rail system, a child of 12 or under was allowed to travel free of charge.
The Italian Rail Service
Rome's train operator is the first one in Europe I have travelled on that actually makes British Rail look good. The first train we approached, the conductor closed the doors as we reached it and wouldn't let us on, I thought this might have something to do with making sure the trains run on time, but as no other train managed to turn up at the allotted schedule this obviously wasn't the case. The next train that arrived had most of the doors out of order, so it resulted in a panic as the crowd of waiting people were forced to run up and down the platform trying to find a door that opened, we made it this time, but many again fell foul of the system where the doors are arbitrarily closed and the train leaves irrespective of whether anyone is waiting to board.
Lack Of The Nanny State
When visiting the Castle De Sant Angelo, a prominent notice warned visitors to beware of the uneven flooring and steps which were original and dated back to the time of the Emperor Hadrian. In this country the castle would either have ot be closed, or the floor would have to be ripped up and replaced in case someone tripped up and sued. There were many similar incidents, and surprisingly we did not see a single fatal accident whilst we were there, surely without our all encompassing Health and Safety Gestapo the people should have been dropping like flies.
Air Conditioned Hotel Rooms
The temperature was a steady 38C whilst we were in Rome, air conditioning must be a prerequisite for living in a country with temperatures like that.
Swiss Air
We flew out with Swiss air, a budget carrier which puts Sleazy Jet and Ryan air to shame. We were fed, watered, given chocolate and the kids on board presented with a selection of toys and games to occupy their time, all fairly inexpensive touches which would put them well in front of the other low cost airlines in my order of preference for future trips.
The Bad
The Vatican
We are constantly told by organised religion that we shouldn't aspire to worldly possessions, why then does the Vatican Cities display wealth and splendour far in excess of what any European King or Queen would be allowed to get away with in this day and age.
Roman Traffic Lights
The first evening in Rome I was amazed by the amount of drivers who, when we were stood on the pavement at pedestrian crossings, stopped and waved us across even though the traffic lights were still on green. I thought at the time that they must be the most considerate drivers in Europe. What I didn't realise at the time, was that in Italy you stop at a green light and go at a red light, as we rapidly discovered when we walked across zebra crossings with the traffic lights at red, and had to dodge the lunatic drivers swerving around us. I think it would be an idea for this strange traffic light system to be more widely publicised to prevent visitors being run down.
Speed Of Your Average Roman
I have often maligned our fast food outlets in the UK for the speed (or lack of it) of their services. After experiencing the Roman equivalent I now realise we operate at warp speed in this country. I walked into a Burger King, which had 4 separate tills open, 6 staff serving, and 8 people in the queue. After 10 minutes the queue had not altered one inch and nobody had actually been served. The amount of historic ruins in the city initially had me thinking that the Italians must be far more respectful of history than we are and more culturally sophisticated. I have since realised that the reason there are so many ancient ruins, is because the construction workers in the city haven't got around to demolishing them yet, and given a few centuries more will probably have them flattened.
The Heat
At a steady 38C during the four days we were there, Rome is just too bloody hot in August. I don't like blisteringly hot weather at the best of times, but trying to walk miles around a city and clamber up and down the 7 hills of room meant that we spent a fortune buying bottled water at ridiculous rates from local street sellers.
The Indifferent
The Population
The locals were a pretty miserable looking bunch. Sure if you asked for directions they tended to help you if they could, there was none of the contemptuous look and ignorance you would receive in say Paris at asking a local for help. But equally there was no sense of pleasure either. Ask for directions in Holland, or Scandinavia and the people seems to genuinely enjoy talking to you. In Italy they just seemed, well, indifferent.
We have always been able to dress our games units up for specific parties or events. However we decided recently to take things a lot further and offer a completely themed service. The first event we had planned for this was a World War 2 themed party at a British army establishment near Salisbury.
The Victorian decor was changed for panels depicting famous world war 2 figures, airplanes, tanks and a large image of the Victoria Cross. We added flags, guns, ammunition belts and ammo boxes along with camouflage netting, dummy hand grenades, barbed wire and reproduction documents and newspapers to give each stall an period feel. Games were changed to match the theme so instead of coconut shie, we had the guests throwing rubber grenades at images of Hitler. The cork gun shooting range had you killing Nazi soldiers, and ball in the bucket became toss the handgrenade into the fox hole.
To complete the feel, all of our staff were dressed in British Army uniforms, well thats not strictly true, most of the staff were in British Army uniforms, one of us was dressed as a German Officer. Oh all right, I was dressed as an SS officer to add some variety. In fairness the stall I was operating was called the Nazi shoot, with the objective being to kill 2 out of the 3 soldiers on display. Things went well, right up to the point when the Regimental Sargeant Major confiscated the flag in my games unit (a Swastika with the SS runes in each corner). In fairness the brief from the client was a World War 2 theme, and the Germans were ever so slightly involved in that particular conflict, so what they should have held was a 1940's allied troops party. In the end the flag was returned to me and the event was a complete success. It started with a mock dogfight between a Spitfire and a Messerschmitt BF109. I have to say that the sound from the Spitfires Merlin engine at some 50ft height was impressive.
Our next theme is Horror / Halloween themed games which we have just launched. An impressive array of props have been acquired including lifesized figures with decapitated heads, body parts, skulls, skeletons etc. Our new front panels with a horror scene displayed have been fitted, and we have designed a new range of games including hoop the skull, shoot the werewolf etc.
'New Arthur' is only three days old, but already he is learning at an accelerated rate. With 'Old Arthur' being short staffed, I took his alter ego through to Hartlepool Carnival today, within 15 minutes he was looking after the hook a duck stall. I've calculated that at the current rate of progress, the original Arthur will be obsolete by Saturday Teatime.
We are still working flat out and have been for a number of months now. One of our biggest problems is reliable staff. We have a core of freelance people who work for us on an "as needed" basis, which is fine. But occasionally we require additional staff in more of the administrative role that Arthur and I usually occupy.
After finding staff of this type in short supply, I hit upon the idea of cloning Arthur. A top of the range ACME do it yourself cloning kit was duly purchased. I studied the operating instructions carefully, weighed and measured all of the critical components of the systems, and finally was ready to start. A sample of Arthurs DNA was duly obtained the ingredients mixed together and after a couple of week we awaited the unveiling of the new " Clone Arthur". The results were not what I was expecting, however New Arthur has taken up his role quite diligently. He is pictured below sat on one of our office chairs, whilst taking a short break from answering inquiries.
I sit here writing this, surrounded by potential danger. Muslim fundamentalists are ready to blow me up at the first opportunity, swine flu is lurking waiting to infect me, criminals armed with knives and guns are an everpresent danger to anyone who steps out of their front door ( and many who don't), and somewhere out in space a big chuck of rock is on its way to smash into the earth and plunge us all into a new ice age. We can however relax, safe in the knowledge that our wonderful government is tackling at least one of these problems.
In the future, criminals will not be able to use toy guns to frighten people when they rob them. How has the government achieved this miracle? Simple really, toys guns can now only be manufactured in blue plastic. What a stunningly effective idea. If someone points a gun at you in the future and it is blue, you will know that it is not real. Of course there are other problems this creates, I mean obviously the government has also banned the sale of black paint, because some criminal mastermind might get the idea of painting their blue gun black and it will then look just like a toy gun that has been made out of black plastic! I now need to swap my black car in, because if I scratch it I won't be able to buy paint to touch it up.
It's strange though, I haven't seen any announcements in the news about black paint being banned, and the highly paid government experts won't have just ordered guns to be made in blue and not thought to ban black paint, would they?
“The art is not in making money, but in keeping it” Proverb
This is turning out to be one incredible year. We are on average receiving bookings at about 5 times the rate of last year which is brilliant. We are seeing large amounts of repeat business which is brilliant. We are working with loads of events companies and wedding planners which is brilliant. We have an unbelievable amount of paperwork to work through which is bloody awful, as I do the bulk of it.
One thing which really annoys me is chasing payments up from companies which have the resources to pay us on time without any problems. I can accept that sometimes smaller companies or individuals need to hang on to their cash reserves as they are constantly juggling things around, but when national or multinational companies occupy hours of my time chasing up overdue accounts it makes my blood boil. One example was a client we worked for in March, which happened to be part of a major chain of BMW/MINI dealerships. Whilst negotiating the equipment they wanted us to supply our emails were answered within minutes. Once the job was complete our emails were met with a resounding silence. Eventually I sent a final demand by post with the declaration that after 7 days we would be filing a claim with the court services. This produced a result, a rather snotty member of the administration team phoned me to request a copy of the invoice, he seemed rather put out at my temerity in threatening legal action. After sending an invoice again and waiting another fortnight, I filed a claim with Her Majesty's online money claims service. This was done on a Monday morning. The court will have delivered a copy of my claim to the dealership on Tuesday, and lo and behold, on Wednesday I received my cheque for the outstanding amount plus court costs.
Now the fact that they did not contest this meant that they accepted they owed me this money. The fact that they paid it instantly under threat of litigation meant that they could afford to pay it to me. So why did it take 3 months and a court claim to actually get it. Obviously they won't ever use me again as I began court proceedings against them, and obviously I would not ever work for them again as you have to sue them to get paid, so why did things reach that point?
I have to say the online courts service is brilliant, I have used it 4 times this year to good effect each time, and now we have altered our accounts systems so that we use it sooner rather than later.
We are having to continually expand to keep pace with the bookings for our catering carts, usually from one of the many event management companies we have formed close working relationships with. With the large selection of fun foods we are offering, we are picking up a fabulous amount of bookings for our carts. There is however one market we haven't penetrated to the same degree, our carts are designed in most cases for high volume servings, usually 300 people upover. We receive regular enquiries from people organising small private parties, dinner events and the like. usually for anything from 20 to 100 people. In these cases our carts can prove a little expensive, especially if the client fancies two or three different products. To better serve this market we have been trialling a new flexible cart system we have christened multiCART.
We have trialled the multiCART system at around 30 events this season and it has proven a resounding success. It works on quite a simple principle, instead of our standard candy floss cart with unlimited servings, and say a hot dog cart with 300 servings, you can hire a multiCART 300, this gives the client two items on the same cart with 150 servings of each (in actual fact the system is flexible enough to make it say 200 hot dogs and 100 candy floss, or any combination upto 300 in total). The best part is the price, we can offer this at the same price as one of our standard candy floss carts. The multiCART is available in various offerings with 300,500,700 servings. The bigger packages allow you to pick an additional item, giving a total of three different products on a combined cart. We have proven the concept at, amongst others, dinner parties, small birthday parties, bar mitzvahs and wedding receptions.
We believe that this system, along with our standard range of carts and the new microCART designed for venues with limited space, gives us one of the broadest offerings of fun catering carts in the UK.
“The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step.” Lao Tzu
Over the last 4 days we have racked up just short of 1500 miles. We started with a trip down to Cornwall to deliver a humber of attractions that are going out on medium term hire to a tourist attraction. We arrived home late Friday evening, then Saturday morning were up for one of our many trips to the capital, this time with a candy floss and popcorn cart to a major film studio for an after film "wrap" party. We finished it off on Sunday by taking ice cream, popcorn and candy floss carts through to a venue in Cheshire for a wedding reception. A friend of mine, Cornelius , was already there having set up a carousel the day before. He was talking to the venue owner when I arrived, as I walked up the owner looked at me then asked Cornelius if I was his son! LOL, the ironic thing is I think he is actually younger than me, he must have had a tougher paper round than me.
Our new range of microCARTS finally received their top frames and one of them was in operation at the event, (pictured below);
I now have a couple of days breathing space, then we are in operation at Sunderland, Newcastle, Richmond, Cornwall, Leeds, Preston and Liverpool all before the end of the week.
If you are an event planner, wedding planner of someone who has just been tasked with planning an event you should know that choosing the right caterers can make or break your event. Sub standard catering can, at best, leave your client unimpressed, at worst leave him off work with food poisoning. A quick search on Google will leave you with a bewildering list of potential catering companies, so how can you go about minimising the chances of using a caterer who just isn't up to the job?
A traditional method of checking a caterer out is to ask for references. You are quite entitled to do this, and if your caterer objects, then strike him off your list. Once you have a reference, its no good just putting it to one side, contact the named referee and ask for details of work carried out for them by your prospective caterer. Its work asking at this point just what sort of events have been catered for, there is little point in appointing a catering company who specialise in small dinner parties for a couple of dozen people if you are trying to feed 2000 delegates at a major conference.
Once you have whittled your list down to a select few, the next item on your agenda should be health and hygiene. A company may be able to provide the most mouth watering menu imaginable, but if their hygiene is suspect it can still ruin both your event and your reputation, not to mention losing a valuable client.
It is a requirement of most local authorities that catering staff should all hold at the very least a basic or level 2 hygiene certificate. Again any reputable company should be more than willing to furnish you with copies of these certificates for all of their staff. The company itself should have been checked out by their local health department and records of this inspection should be available. Many councils are part of the scores on doors scheme, whereby each catering business is inspected and graded from 0 to 5 stars (some councils use a similar scheme which have unsatisfactory, satisfactory and excellent rather than stars). An initial impression may be that 4 stars (or satisfactory) is quite good. The fact is that you can score 4 stars and have upto 3 failings with your hygiene procedures, so anything less than 5 or excellent indicates a company that is less than fully hygienic.
When there is a vast choice of 5 star caterers to choose from why settle for sub standard operators?
Once you have selected a caterer you are comfortable with its time to choose a menu. This has to be a balance between what your clients would like, and what your caterer can realistically provide. Don't forget that serving 2000 guests simultaneously isn't as easy as providing meals for a family of 4 on a Sunday lunchtime.
Its worth involving your client with menu selection, as ultimately they are the people you are trying to please. If you are planning a conference for Asian or Caribbean delegates, they may not appreciate pie and peas all round.
You should also have something in place for those delegates who for religious or other reasons cannot eat your main choice, the most obvious are vegetarians, but you may have gluten intolerant guests or people who have trouble with lactose products. Also some food items such as seafood or peanuts can have severe consequences for people with allergies.
You would be as well taking heed of your caterers comments at this point, he/she will know what can and cannot be done in the timescale you have, and demanding totally unrealistic service will leave your caterer stressed out and you with a client unimpressed with the final result.
A little forward planning and common sense can result in a successful event that does wonders for your reputation, and leaves you with a highly delighted client.
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.
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.
Our initial catering line consisted of candy floss and popcorn. Over the course of time we were asked for various items, anything that was requested regularly we decided would make a good line, and in due course we added it to our portfolio. Some lines such as mulled wine, I decided to try "blind" as it were, with quite good results as over the winter months Mulled wine was one of our best lines. Since the end of winter the mulled wine jobs have dried up completely, pretty obvious really as it is a traditional winter drink.
To hopefully take advantage of the warmer summer months (although the great British summertime being what it is means that mulled wine could well be a popular line) we have just put deals in place to supply a line of cold drinks. Our initial offerings are Thick Milk Shakes, Slush, Frozen Cocktails and Pure Fruit Juice.
Our range of ice cream carts are also in regular use, and now we have a reliable supplier of quality Kulfi Ice Cream, we are hoping that will be popular in the speciality Asian wedding market.
Over the next few months we have a number of other new catering products that we will be making available to our client base, so by the end of the summer we should have the most comprehensive line up of traditional catering carts in the U.K.
Our composting initiative is working at full steam now, we haven't actually had a finished load of compost from it yet, but that has been down to two reasons. Firstly, as we arrange catering packages for set numbers of people, we tend to generate a lot less waste than the days when we attended traditional funfairs, also the composter is operating at quite a high temperature, and degrading food waste so rapidly that we can have it half full one day, go back a week later and the level has dropped noticeably. I don't understand the full chemistry behind the process, but it seems that microbiological organisms convert the food waste into carbon dioxide gas.
The food standards agency are currently trialling nutritional labeling for caterers. Manufacturers are already printing their products with labels showing calories, fat, sodium content etc, but catering companies have not had to do this. At the moment its a voluntary scheme being tried by a limited number of companies and overseen by the FSA. However many trial schemes tend to be ramped up to compulsory schemes at some point, so we have decided to adopt nutritional labeling on our own initiative. All of our carts, (with some 12 different products) have been issued with plaques containing the vital statistics. The next step is to add this data to our main catering website, Candy Floss Crazy.
As the website runs to some 490 pages, it is a reasonably lengthy procedure. We have started already, and candy floss, popcorn and hot dogs have had a small button added in the top right hand corner of the screen. This is labeled INFO/NUTRITION, and when clicked displays the data for that particular cart. We hope to have had all of the pages altered by the end of the month, but as we are currently operating around a dozen websites amounting to over 3000 pages, its a job that is being farmed out to some of the companies we use occasionally to update our sites. The button is shown below.
March has started even better than the first two months of the year. In the 6 days to press, we have received 80% of our total inquiries for the WHOLE of March last year. Add to this another half dozen bookings for March (two thirds of which are in central London) and we are starting to see levels of business that we don't normally receive until around June/July.
We are also due to announce a new concept in carts (along with a number of new lines), this will be designed for smaller events such as dinner parties or weddings which are attended by smaller numbers of guests than a typical corporate event, (for some reason folk in London seem to throw an awful lot of dinner events, but being designed for large numbers of people, our usual cart services are a little bit overkill), this will enable us to offer a better value service in this particular market and we aim to increase our London based workload substantially.
The other news this week is that we have finally sourced a reliable, provider for Kulfi Ice Cream, this is an Asian delicacy, very similar to ice cream, but with a much creamier texture. As we attended a high number of Asian weddings last year we hope that this will prove to be a popular choice.
I have always been a believer in reading the instructions before I start trying to do something. I often upbraid others for wasting time fiddling with things for hours, then having to eventually resort to reading the instructions and discovering that what they were trying to do is either A impossible or B a 5 second process by simply pressing the correct series of buttons.
Well I have to admit that I have fallen foul of my own rules. During the course of last year we attended a large number of events in central London. Quite often with 2 vehicles, and on one particularly busy day we had a total of 5 vans and cars there. This has been for anything from one large event to upto five smaller events on the same day. Now central London is covered by the London Congestion Charge, and its my responsibility to register the vehicles for this and pay the required charges. Usually I manage it O.K., however on a number of occasions I have ended up with PCN's (Penalty Charge Notices). At the last count, along with parking fines and one tow away fee it added up to a shade over £800, none of which is tax deductible. The usual sequence of events is that due to the amount of events we are involved with, we set off mega early for the capital and I suddenly realise that I have not paid the congestion charges. I then resolve that I will do it the next morning without fail. We then carry out the one two, three or more events over the course of the day, arriving back home at perhaps 5AM. We then have two or three hours sleep, before jumping up and setting off to another part of the country for that days events, and I plain forget to pay our dues. Prompt a week later when a demand (or possibly more than one) drop thorough our letterbox.
Well I looked into the Transport for London site yesterday, and discovered that if I register our vehicles as a fleet, it insures me from receiving PCN charges, as every time we travel into London our number triggers an invoice that is sent out for that vehicle, brilliant! We have to register a minimum of ten vehicles at £10 each, which is less than the fine for two PCN's. Added to the fact that we have just accepted our 67th booking for this season (and we haven't reached April/May yet which is usually when we receive well over 50% of our bookings), over 25% of which are in London, and I could quite possibly have just presented a sizable fine from adding up over the season.
We are pleased to announce that under the local authorities health and hygiene inspection procedure, called Scores On The Doors, we have just been awarded 5 stars for our catering operations. You are allowed one minor failing under the 5 star rating, but I am glad to say we got the perfect score with no faults at all. This makes all the hard work and rigorous quality control procedures worthwhile.
In line with our health and safety policies I have just arranged for a number of additional staff to take first aid courses in early April, and I intend to have everyone trained as fire marshal's before the start of the main season. We have added a number of extra fire extinguishers to our pool, consisting of small 1 or 2 kg dry powder devices, designed to be stored on our carts and mini stalls, larger 6kg dry powder extinguishers for use in our central pool, (the idea is the small device is used to fight the fire initially, gaining time for our safety officers to move the larger devices to the point of the fire). We also added wet chemical extinguishers specifically for attractions such as the doughnut cart which uses large quantities of hot cooking oil.
Our safety paperwork has also grown, we now have around 90 pages of safety related data, before we add the individual risk assessments and insurance documents. Luckily virtually all of our clients now accept this data as either a pdf file or supplied on cd, so we are managing to keep within our environmental policies.
Our small Victorian style side stalls have turned out to be one of our most versatile and popular additions to our portfolio of attractions. This was proven again today when we attended an event taking place in South Shields. It was organised by a North East events management company that we have worked for on a number of projects. Anyway, this particular one we were asked to provide a stall to fit in with the theme of healthy hearts. The budget we were allocated was pretty small, but nevertheless we still managed to have custom printed banner across the back of the stall. We also changed one of our coconut shy games into a knock the heart off (using softer balls than we would with the coconuts). Everything worked well and we had an enjoyable visit back to my native North East.
After the event finished we called in at a new Valentines funfair. Arthur was there with a couple of items of equipment. Business was steady, but there is still time for it to improve. The event itself looked well, with fencing around the complete site, an impressive entrance gate and a good selection of attractions from around the country. I hope it does well as it will benefit the business as a whole to have new events coming online, but I really think that this could be a summer that see things tight right the way through.
The announcement we made in an earlier post was the first result to emerge from our new SINAS initiative. This scheme (Safety Is No Accident Scheme) is a complete review of all of the safety systems connected with operating our equipment both at funfair and in the corporate events market. The idea is to take the best approach from each of these industries, and create a hybrid scheme for our own business that is safer than either industry. We have a mini website at S.I.N.A.S which will chart the ongoing evaluation of every aspect of our operations.
What we plan to do is introduce new safer working practices as and when we find them, rather that waiting until the end of the whole process and then trying to introduce everything at once. The decision to subject all of our attractions and additionally the power supply cables to quarterly PAT testing was as a direct result of this scheme and we now have a number of personnel qualified to undertake the testing, along with specially purchased PAT and RCD testing equipment.
“Out of this nettle - danger - we pluck this flower - safety.”
William Shakespeare 1564-1616
We are proud to announce that from 1st February 2009, we are setting the standards in electrical safety within our industry. We already comply with the stringent ADIPS (Amusement Device Inspection Procedure Scheme), which is the Health and Safety Executives recommended inspection scheme for funfair attractions, but from the start of February we are taking things a step further by combining the Portable Appliance Testing (commonly known as PAT) scheme with the ADIPS scheme.
We have had the majority of our equipment and power cables PAT tested for the last couple of years. However a desire to exceed the current safety requirements, and actually set the standard, has led to the purchase of our own electrical testing equipment, followed by training for key members of staff.
As a result we now have the procedures in place to test all of our equipment and power cables at least every six months, with a view to increasing the frequency of this testing as more members of staff are qualified to undertake PAT testing. Additionally we have purchased RCD testing equipment allowing us to regularly test the safety devices fitted to much of the equipment we operate.
As a final initiative, we have added a number of in line RCD devices to our equipment reserves, this will allow us to provide additional protection to our attractions when we are operating inside older buildings and events venues. Our portable generators are already fitted with protection devices of this type, which again will receive regular audited testing to ensure that we have no compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of our equipment.
Glossary
ADIPS The Amusement Device Inspection procedure Scheme. A rigourous safety standard applied to the funfair industry in this country.
PAT Portable Appliance Testing A scheme widely used by other (non funfair) industries in the UK.
RCD Residual Current Device. An electrical safety device which disconnect the power in the event of someone receiving an electrical shock.
We have been supplying all of our candy floss carts with Fairtrade only ingredients since late 2007. Now we have taken things a step further by sourcing ingredients that carry both Kosher and Halal certification, whilst still remaining Fairtrade. Hopefully this will go down well with the large number of Jewish and Muslim clients we have acquired over the last few years.
Whilst sorting everything out, I noticed the many similarity's between Kosher and Halal, and that intrigued me. So being an inquisitive sort, I dug a little deeper using the power of the internet. What I found surprised me. We don't really study other religions in this country, in truth the ways things are going we don't study our own very much. However looking below the surface of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, the amount of history and symbolism they share is incredible. All the religions worship the one deity, only with different names. Jesus is not only an important figure the Christian religion but also the Islamic one. Many of the characters in the Old Testament also appear in the Qur'an (the Islamic spelling of what we commonly call the Koran) Adam, Abraham, Moses, Noah, Jesus are all there.
Many of the incidents in the Bible are also recounted in the Islamic book, too closely to be mere coincidence. About the only major figure which isn't shared is the prophet Mohammed PBUH, although some other offshoots of the Christian faith do mention him. All in all it seems the world's three major religions share more common ground than many people would be comfortable admitting. Which makes the whole middle eastern conflict one big puzzle, sure as hell confuses me.
With all the predictions of doom and disaster it is difficult to predict how this season will turn out. I have been going back through our records from the start of last year, and to date our level of inquiries are up thirty five percent on this time last year. How many of these will ultimately be converted to actual jobs is impossible to tell, but at least the fact that people are still planning events is some comfort.
Traditionally January and February is our quietest time, so we usually get through any maintenance jobs that have been deferred from the end of last year and make any alterations or new additions to attractions that we usually don't have time to do in the busier months. I'm also taking this opportunity to finally implement a couple of new safety related initiatives that we have been planning for a while, I hope to be able to announce them by the beginning of March. Also we are revisiting our progress with our environmental initiatives. We made great progress in a number of environmental fields during the past 12 months, so its time to take stock, see where we go next and draw up the plans to achieve our aims.
Most of our big clients have confirmed their intention to use us again this year so things on the surface look fairly optimistic. I think our biggest worry this year will be other firms failing. If Woolworths had asked us to supply a substantial amount of events a month ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity, blue chip companies like that are usually sure bets. Who would ever have believed that a month down the line they would be gone? Similarly we tend to work a lot with banking organisations, another industry that is on pretty shaky ground at the minute.
I'm hoping that if companies are cutting their budgets back this year, we may end up with more work for our smaller attractions. Although the major events with 4 or 5 adult rides and supporting attractions are nice, they take up a larger proportion of our organisational facilities, and planning time. The same resources can see us undertaking perhaps a dozen or more small events, which taking everything into account can sometimes be more profitable at the end of the day.
Coming back to the yard last week I notice a large stretch of the adjoining field being dug up. After investigating I discovered that the electricity company are removing the overhead power lines (which run over the middle of our property) and re routing them underground. This is an extremely good idea, especially considering what happened a few years back.
To protect those involved, I won't name any names John Henry, but I was sat eating breakfast early one morning, contemplating starting to load everything up ready for the move to northallerton. At the time it was absolutely throwing it down with rain, and I didn't really fancy making a start. Anyway, whilst I was psyching myself up, I suddenly heard a yell, followed by a crash, more yelling and some Anglo Saxon language. Coming out to investigate, I came across the unnamed person (John Henry) who was hobbling about with smoke coming from one of his boots. What had happened was that he had an aerial mounted on a long pole, fastened to the drawbar of his trailer (caravan). To remove this ready for hitting the road he had to lift it up a couple of foot higher , the power cables ran directly overhead, and with the amount of moisture in the air, a spark of electricity had jumped from the power lines, into the Aerial, down the pole into his knee where the pole was resting and out through his boot to earth!, luckily when he dropped the pole he missed my car which was parked next to him so it could have been much worse.
History is littered with tales of heroic last stands, usually against forces much bigger than the defenders, there was Rorkes drift, The Battle of Gandamak and The Battle of the Imjin River all fought by British troops, the Alamo and Battle of the Little Bighorn by our American cousins and the immortal Camarón which established the Foreign Legion as one of the world's elite fighting forces.
Predating all of these was the Battle of Thermopylae in Greece when King Leonidas and his Spartan soldiers, accompanied by a force of allied Greek city states, held back a much larger Persian force under Xerxes for three days in one of the most memorable and eulogized last stands in classical antiquity. Well now we have another last stand on the island of Greece to rank up there with the battles of antiquity.
Bimbo Bishton, who we occasionally work with, has for a number of years provided Victorian carousels for the Christmas event in Athens. A venture which has proven both lucrative and enjoyable over the years. This year however there was the little problem of a major riot taking place after the shooting dead of a young Greek boy. The rioters went berserk in the city square and flattened pretty much everything, setting fire to hotels, shops, cars and anything else that took their fancy. Slap bang in the middle of this stood alone the slightly portly figure of Bimbo armed only with 3 fire extinguishers, facing a crowd which Bimbo estimated at 100,000, but the BBC world service claimed to be around the 10,000 mark (I suppose when you are facing them alone it looks more like 100,000).
I spoke to Bimbo about the events and he explained one particularly tense moment. It seems a young Greek man was holding a petrol bomb in one hand and trying unsuccessfully to strike his lighter in the other, all the time Bimbo was trying to convince him not to set fire to his ride, (Bimbo told me at this point he was debating wether or not to kick the said young man in the testicles), the potential arsonist appeared to be taking no notice of Bimbo when his lighter suddenly flared to life, he looked at Bimbo, shrugged his shoulders and promptly threw the bomb at the giant Christmas tree, so really it is Bimbo's fault that the Athenians lost their famous tree. As the night wore on our intrepid hero was stoically holding his ground when a cloud of teargas drifted his way and proved to him why it was so named, Bimbo said that at this point he was more interested in water for his eyes than in guarding the carousel, but luckily for him one of the rioters explained that water is no good for tear gas, you need lemon juice to neutralise the chemicals and obliged by providing some I can catagorically state however that roumors Bimbo is thinking of setting up a Jif lemon stall at future events are untrue.
Thankfully both Bimbo and the Carousel survived the evening. Bimbo even remarked at how civilised the rioters were, as he put it, there were very few injuries and signs of violence against people, it all seemed to be directed at property, indeed one vendor in a street kiosk remained open throughout the riots and wasn't molested in any way.
I have just started using Twitter. For those of you who don't know what it is, its like a mini blog, you can only post items upto 140 characters long, so it consists of lots of little bite sized posts. My page can be found at TWITTER I'll be seeing Arthur after the weekend so I'll try and get him using the system, will give him a chance to have his say.
“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” John Kenneth Galbraith 1908-2006
I am someone not given to worrying about things that may or may not happen in the future, I leave that to other members of the team. My personal belief is that if there is a possible problem, you can either do something about it or you cannot. If you can then shut up and do it, if you cannot then leave it alone and work on something you can effect. Quite often an unexpected solution presents itself and everything is alright on the night.
There is much talk about the country sliding into recession, and even eventually into depression. Companies are asking the government for bailouts and others are going to the wall. I must admit when major companies like Woolworths and MFI go to the wall, and multinationals like Chrysler, GM and Ford are reportedly struggling to stave off bankruptcy it does paint a grim picture. So should the state bail these companies out or not? The latest talk is of Jaguar being given upto £1 billion in financial help. I must ask why, they are owned by an Indian company, not a British one, should it not be the place of the Indian government to offer aid to an indian company? Poor old Woolworths has gone to the wall for a mere £300 million, much less than Jaguar need and they are a British company, so why are they any less deserving than Jaguar are? Another point is that in business when a weak company ceases trading its business is picked up by other companies who are thus made stronger, but by offering failing companies help, you are rewarding some companies for failure, whilst those that have, through their own prudence found themselves on a sound financial footing are going to be penalised by not being offered help. One of the major American financial institutions that have been bailed out by their government has reportedly paid all of its staff £53,000 bonuses. If the company is in such a state that it needs propping up, what exactly are the staff being rewarded for?
As to Jaguar, I have just bought a Jag, and think its a great car. I wouldn't like to see them go to the wall, BUT I object strongly to my tax payments being used to fund a company owned by one of the richest men in the world. I don't suppose as a thank you for the use of my tax money Mr Tata will knock anything off the next Jaguar I go to buy. Equally when the economy eventually picks up, will these firms that have been helped out offer to pay a higher rate of tax as a thank you, will they hell, instead they will employ very clever accountants who will find a number of dodges that ensure they pay less tax than ever.
In a similar vein, the banks are being bailed out to the tune of billions, but you miss a couple of mortgage payments because of the state of the economy and see just how much help and understanding they offer.
For a while now there has been much debate about value for money offered by the modern funfair industry. Originally we were cheap entertainment for the masses, but over time our prices have gradually crept up. One camp argue that things like beer or newspapers have risen at a faster rate and if we had the same percentage increase we would be much more expensive, but the other camp use the same argument in reverse pointing out that electrical goods like video recorders and mobile phones are now much cheaper the nten or fifteen years ago. Anyway the poll below will give people an opportunity to vote on the value for money offered by the industry.
Arthur almost struck again last weekend. What happened was this, we were contracted to supply 4 games units to an event in the North East. One of these games was our striker (test your strength machine) which is 13ft high. On arrival we were shown the room which would accommodate these games, including the high roofed part of the building where the striker was to be positioned. Due to the fact that once erected the striker would block the door, we were told that we couldn't erect it until after all of the guests had arrived. This isn't a problem as it takes a matter of seconds to assemble the device.
We carried it into the room and left it on the floor near to where it had to go. Almost everyone had arrived when we were told to put the striker up. As we pushed it skyward we discovered to our horror that the room was about 6 inches to low! As we stood there wondering where to go, one of the guys who had hired us told us to push the plastic roof tile out of place and let the striker poke into the attic. We did this, but try as we might the tile remained wobbling in position. Arthur decided to go to the pool room and bring back a long extension bar to dislodge the tile, which he promptly did just as the managing director's wife walked through the door. If she had been two steps quicker, Arthur would have subjected her to a drastic reshaping of her nose, something along the lines of amputation without a general anaesthetic!
Well the year is gradually drawing to a close. We have one more major event in London just before Christmas, and a number of smaller events in the North East to round the year off. Overall it has been a cracking season, we have added a couple of traditional events (where we charge the public) which have bucked the trend and been very successful. We have picked up a lot of new corporate clients along the way and seen a steady stream of corporate events pass off very successfully, (although sometimes we have been a bit like ducks, all serene on the surface but paddling away furiously behind the scenes to keep everything running correctly), and we have a number of events pre booked into next year so that's a nice foundation to start the new year off on.
I had a sad trek into Nottinghamshire a few days ago to attend the funeral of Dave Houghton, or "Dave the lamp man" as he was universally known. Dave was a supplier of lighting equipment to the fairground industry, travelling about the country in his van delivering everything from a lightbulb to a complete lighting system for the rides you se on any modern fairground. In truth he was more than just a supplier, an honorary member of the Showmen's Guild, the industries national trade body, Dave was a genuinely nice guy. We never really bought a lot from him as in the past I used to import lights from Germany for our equipment and Dave used to deal in mainly Italian products which weren't compatible. However many a time I would be driving past his van and wind the window down to say hello, an hour later I would still be discussing a myriad of topics with him, as he was articulate and intelligent and could hold a conversation about anything. He died after a fairly short struggle with cancer, which came as a shock as after a recent operation he had been given a much brighter prognosis and we all thought he would be here for a while longer. One nice touch at his funeral was when his coffin was carried on the back of Anthony Harris's vintage Scammell, something Dave had expressed a wish for. The large turnout at his funeral was indicative of the esteem he was held in by many in the industry and he will be sadly missed.
I am up bright and early tomorrow for another long trek upto Livingston and Dunfirmline in Scotland to collect two of our chestnut barrows that have been hired to Sky television for a week. We don't normally hire equipment out unattended, but part of the deal was we provided training for their catering staff, and chestnuts are a fairly easy commodity to cook. Additionally we have found that large corporations such as Sky tend to be repeat customers once they have dealt with us so hopefully there will be some opportunities for further work.
I intend to actually take a day off on Christmas Day, then its back to updating and expanding our website portfolio ready for January and February which tend to be when a lot of the upcoming summer inquiries start arriving.
During last week my timetable was something like this, Sunday Prestwich near Manchester, Monday London, Tuesday Cardiff, Wednesday Stockton On Tees, Thursday Stockton, Friday Wigan, Saturday London , Sunday Stockton. On top of this we also had events at Durham, Blyth, Keighley and Worksop. After the Sunday we had a few days breather then starting on Thursday we are at two venues in London and simultaneously Durham, then Leeds, London, Ingelston, Leyland and Durham on the same day followed by an RAF base in the North East, followed by Newcastle and Durham on the Sunday! I personally have drove over two thousand miles in less than a week, and look set to repeat the feat in the next round of events.
At the second of our London events last week I was in Hampstead high street for a Christmas light switch on. The celebrity doing the turn on was the Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. Up close he looked just as rough as he does in the newspaper photos. I should imagine after his forthcoming divorce is finalised he will look a damn site sicker. Arthur is always complaining that he never gets to go to any events with celebrities present, well I have taken care of that for him, on Friday he is attending a do in London where Russ Abbott is due to turn the lights on. That's good enough for Arthur, so hopefully he will stop complaining for a while.
Our major Christmas event in Stockton on Tees was a resounding success. THe organisers expressed their delight in the number of tickets they had sold to use the attractions, the local people expressed their delight in being able to ride a big wheel, gallopers etc for only fifty pence, and we managed to get through the four days without any major crises appearing, so hopefully this will become an ongoing booking for us.
Normally by now, the rush is over and things are slowing down. This year the opposite has happened and November has been one of our best months, December is set to surpass it, even beating the peak period of June/July. The downside is the distances we are covering. I have drove around 1400 miles in the last 4 days. We were in London Monday, Cardiff Tuesday, Stockton on Tees to set up for the new Christmas Market on Wednesday, then backwards and forwards to Stockton twice on Thursday, at this rate the little Jag will be wore out by Easter.
The event on Monday evening was the turning on of the Christmas lights at Stella McCartneys Bruton Street store. We were commisioned to hand chestnuts and hot chocolate to the guests. During the evening we were entertained to Sir Paul McCartney, Lulu and Peter Kay singing Christmas carols about 6 feet away from us. The model Marie Helvin also made an appearance, I can only think that she has a portrait in the attic Dorien Grey style because she was absolutely stunning. If she was in her mid thirties she would be a great beauty, but to find out she is in her fifties is incredible!
We have also received another award for our recycling efforts with a silver in the National Recycling Stars scheme.
After adapting our sidestalls for promotional use, we are continued to be surprised by their flexibility. A recent pre bonfire event requiring a combined chestnut, candy floss and popcorn stall, but with limited space saw us using the front counter set up we had designed for the Croydon Food Festival to produce a compact stall with all 3 items. The next night we were down the country at Goodwood House for a corporate event. We had been asked to provide a chestnut stall, along with a selection of pick and mix nougat, brandy snap, toffee apples, peanut brittle and cinder toffee. One of our stalls proved ideal once again as the back counter system made a perfect area for preparing everything whilst the new front counter had plenty of room to display everything along with one of our mini chestnut ovens.
Whilst we were still heavily involved with the traditional fairground industry, the current thinking in sidestall design was to produce a stall optomised for a specific game. As a result there tended to be shooting galleries, basketball stalls etc that only ever operated as shooting galleries and basketball stalls. When we made the move into corporate entertainment we re thought this strategy, and instead designed a range of general purpose units that could be quickly and easily operated as different units. This had two benefits for us, it allowed us to offer a greater range of games and catering units without the tremendous expense of building and maintaining a wide number of specialist stalls. Also it allowed us to keep a common look and feel across the range of stalls, which definitely looks better at more upmarket corporate jobs.
Our range of mini Victorian style side stalls have been one of our biggest successes. With only a few additional components we offer a range of around 20 different games. Similarly our catering carts are available as popcorn, candy floss, espresso coffee, ice cream, mulled wine, soup, hot dogs and more, all based on a standard cart body with an interchangable counter system. We recently discovered a new opening for these units when a major shopping centre in the London area contacted us to ask if we could supply stalls and carts for some of their retailers to use at a promotional event. We looked into the associated costs and work required and discovered that all our carts needed was a new solid counter (minus the holes cut out for candy floss machines etc), and our side stall units needed 3 extra pieces and a new counter to make them ideal for this sort of work. On the day, not only was the promotions company that had hired us extremely pleased, but the shopping centre management told us they were very impressed. We are now adding the extra frames to all of our units to enable any of them to be used as promotional stalls. We supply the stalls complete with a range of different counter and shelving systems, tube lighting, decorative coloured lights across the front and a full range of electrical connections allowing the installation of catering and display equipment. Coupled with our custom printed front panels these make a cheap and very effective basis for shopping centre promotions etc.
One of the most popular forms of fairground entertainment, is the old fashioned Victorian style fair, or "Fayre" as it is sometimes spelt. Perhaps its a feeling of nostalgia for when Pax Britannica was at its height, or people could just be looking for something different from the loud music and flashing lights of the modern funfair. Whatever the reason for wanting a Victorian Funfair, there are a couple of immediate problems the event organisers comes up against when specifying traditional attractions.
To begin with there are very few actual Victorian era attractions still operating. Most have been replaced with modern equivalents, some have rotted away or been broken up for scrap, and some just can't meet modern health and safety requirements. Also the world is a vastly different place to what it was a hundred odd years ago. A popular game on the fairground was "Shoot The Rat", with real live rats as the targets, imagine trying to get that one past the animal rights people in the name of authenticity. Many of the treats people associate with fairgrounds, such as candy floss, weren't invented until after Queen Victoria shuffled off this mortal coil, so sticking to strictly authentic Victorian items limits your choice somewhat.
So does that mean that it isn't possible to present a Victorian funfair? If you want only genuine Victorian then probably not, however there is a flourishing section of the fairground industry that have available a wide range of "Victorian Style," equipment. This takes various forms, with larger items like the Carousel being a pretty good replica of the original rides, albeit constructed using modern methods and materials. Things like candy floss and mulled wine can be dispensed from vintage style hand carts, and games units are decorated with the traditional scrolled paintwork of a bygone era. Some of the better operators are quite happy to supply members of staff in period costume, and the overall effect can be quite realistic.
With the application of modern technology, these retro style fairs can easily meet modern health and safety requirements, so its possible to provide an old style fair, with all of the modern advantages of safety and reliability. However that’s no cause for complacency, the same vetting procedure should still be used when booking an fair, safety documents such as risk assessments and insurances should still be provided well before the event. If you chosen operator cannot supply part of the documentation, or tries to delay passing it you, then find someone else. In today’s no win no fee culture you cannot afford to take chances.
With a little common sense, and some compromise you can add a realistic period fair to enhance your event be it a corporate fun day or something like a winter Christmas market.
One of our most popular lines is our range of Victorian style catering carts. To date we have a range of carts with candy floss, popcorn, hot dogs, espress coffee, tea and hot chocolate, crepes and French pancakes available. We have just expanded this range with the addition of roast chestnuts and mulled wind. In fairness we have been supplying chestnut carts for a couple of year, but we have just adapted our range of flexible carts to offer chestnuts rather than having to bring a specialised cart in for the event. This is paying dividends already with us in negotiation with a major shopping centre to provide them with chestnut carts for a range of events. The mulled wine cart is a new venture, added with the intention of capturing some more of the Christmas party market by offering something a little more upmarket. Details of our mulled wine carts can be found here.....
We will shortly have an announcement to make with regards to some new Christmas fairs we have been asked to provide attractions to. One of these will be a major event, with the others being on a slightly smaller scale, but still an important part of our ongoing strategy to provide quality funfairs in a number of city centre venues.
At the moment we are at the great Nottingham Goose Fair, supposedly one of this countries premier fairground events. In truth over the last few years it has become a shadow of its former self, with many of the smaller 'private' funfairs up and down the country providing a much better return on investment. Whilst stood at the front of our helter skelter I was approached by a young lady from Nottingham radio asking if I would be prepared to be interviewed live by Radio Nottingham. "That's not a problem!", I replied, and the interviewer (sadly not the aforementioned young lady), and I ascended the helter skelter to take advantage of the increased signal strength received from being 40 ft in the air.
The interview opened with the statement that a lot of local people feel the prices charged on the rides at Nottingham are expensive. Now they have a valid point here, however I explained that this particular fair is probably the most expensive in the country for an operator to attend. It's not just the rental for the space, but the charge for having a car present at the fair, plus towing vehicles, living accomodation etc. I think our next most expensive event costs us something like 20 percent of what Nottingham levy. The interviewer was quite reasonable with his questions and I think I put our point of view across fairly well. I am one of those people who believe that we are moving away from our roots with the prices we are charging, but at places like Nottingham we have very litle room to cut things without the council helping us out by lowering some of our expenses.
I am now just about to set off back to Nottingham to dismantle the helter skelter, its pouring it down with rain, is freezing cold and generally all round miserable. At times like this I wish Arthur wasn't afraid of heights and I could send him.
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
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.
“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.
We have just added a new soft scoop ice cream cart to our portfolio (pictured below). This was in operation over the weekend at Aldermaston for a wedding event. Dunnita travelled down there with the cart as I had kit in operation during the day for a Coca Cola event, and on the evening at another of our Galaxy radio bookings. Everything went smoothly with Dunnita ringing up at one point to report that the bride was an actress currently starring in the West End production of Joseph, and that a number of television celebrities were in attendance at the wedding.
The cart carries and dispenses upto 12 different flavour of soft scoop ice cream that we have sourced from a small independant Yorkshire producer. At the wedding it went down a treat, with many guests coming back for seconds and thirds due to the taste.
We are in the process of broadening our horizons and branching out into full event management. In truth we are pretty much acting as an event management company already with many of our clients requesting various non funfair related items. In readiness for the launch of our new company, we have been adding numerous items to our portfolio. Some we have acquired ourselves, others in reciprocal deals with 3rd parties. Anyway one of the first of these items is a totally portable mini boating lake, designed for kids it enables us to supply a lake ranging from 20ft by 20ft upto 25ft by 40ft. This is ideal for inside shopping centers, large hotels etc. The page from our new brochure is reproduced below. Ignore the image of the Great White Shark, that's in reference to the name of our upcoming company and will be revealed in due course.
I recently found myself with nothing to do one evening. Well that's not strictly true, I am still putting the finishing touches to the launch of a new company, and I always have some internet promotions work I can be carrying out, but for once I had nothing urgent screaming at me to be done. The upshot was that my wife, daughter and I jumped in the car and nipped out to the xscape centre at Castleford for a couple of games of 10 pin bowling.
Midway through the second game I managed to drop the ball and bowl it backwards, away from the pins. A bit like Arthur after a heavy drinking session really. Anyway it reminded me of years earlier when my (at that time) wife to be and I went out bowling. At the lane adjacent to ours was a competitive match between two teams. As the last ball of their competition was about to be bowled, I slipped and somehow managed to throw my ball into their lane. It rolled ever so slowly down the lane and clipped a single pin, promptly losing the match for the home team!
One thing that surprised me was how quiet the Xscape centre was, in the past we have had to book a lane and then come back anything upto an hour later. This time not only did we start to play immediately, but many of the lanes were empty. Similarly the bars and restaurants around the place were only about a quarter full. It was on a weekend and during the school holidays so I expected the place to be heaving.
Saturday saw me at the second of our Galaxy radio events. This time in the Quest nightclub in Wakefield. I finished at 1 am but couldn't get our cart out until after 3 due to fact that the place was absolutely packed. We took one of our larger carts with the twisted brass poles at each corner, which resulted in one young lady attempting to pole dance. Unfortunately this unbalanced the cart and I had to stop her.
We have just taken advantage of a new service that turns our blog into a formatted version suitable for viewing on the new generation of mobile phones. If you point your phones browser to Funfairgames Mobile Blog it will load up a miniaturised version of this blog, complete with a commenting system allowing you to read about Arthurs adventures anywhere you may be.
We recently picked up a block booking for one of our candy floss carts from a Yorkshire radio station, Galaxy FM. The first of these events took place in the Trilogy nightclub in Doncaster on Saturday evening. We transported a cart through Saturday afternoon, parked in a pay to park car park outside of the club and set the candy floss cart up ready for that evening. We arrived back at the club about nine thirty and parked in the same spot we had occupied during the afternoon. About twenty minutes later I came down for something out of the car only to find it gone. Now I have spoke to people who have had cars stolen before, and they talked of the confusion at not seeing the car where they left it. I experienced it firsthand as I walked about the car park looking for my car and knowing full well it was gone from where I had parked it. After I came back into the club the DJ informed me that it would have been towed away as after 6pm that particular car park reverts to private land.
I looked about and managed to find a small warning sign, which was in complete darkness and phoned the number only to receive a recorded message telling me that I could not have my car released until the next day. When I went back the next day I was hit with a charge of £260. This broke down as follows, £90 for clamping, £110 for towing away (which must have been performed virtually simultaneously), £30 storage as it was impounded before midnight and £30 storage as they still had it after midnight (even though there wasn't any choice in the matter as they don't release cars until the following day, presumably to drive up the storage charge.) So that worked out at just about the most expensive parking ticket I have ever had. I could have just about stomached the clamping fee, or the tow away fee, but I think they are coming it a bit to hit someone with both. Its a bit like being caught doing 50 in a 30 zone and being fined for doing 40 mph and also fined for doing 50.
We had an interesting week just gone, perfectly illustrating the wide variety of jobs we undertake. We started off by travelling down to Godstone in Surrey on a Tuesday afternoon. Once there we set up a number of attractions ready for the arrival the next day of Trinny and Susannah for their Undress the Nation series. We were providing a traditional village fete backdrop to make the program a little more visually pleasing. We spent a large part of the Wednesday morning moving things around as the director etc wanted to try different angles on particular shots. At one point both of the stars of the program had a go at making candy floss, and did quite well for novices, and then proceeding to walk around eating it, bet they don't recommend that to their subjects!
After the derig on Wednesday evening, we drove around 70 miles to Winchester, spent the evening their and then Thursday morning set up for a telecommunications company fun day. Arthur travelled from the North East for this one, a round trip of about 700 miles! We only operated for 2 hours so it was short and sweet and we were soon on our way home.
Friday was a day off, we had equipment at various events, but nothing I needed to attend personally. Saturday we were off back down the country to a wedding at a stately home in Frome, Somerset. We only supplied a coconut shy there, but thanks to the design of our units we have some that can be fitted into the read of a Hatchback car so the fuel costs are kept to a minimum. Sunday saw us providing candy floss and popcorn to another wedding, this time at Blenhiem Palace in Oxfordshire. This has to be the most stunning venue we have attended to date. In truth I think you would need to be in Buckingham Palace to trump it. The drive in past the huge lake with the semi submerged bridge is awesome. This continues right through the impressive entrance gates, courtyard and main buildings.
Although the day went well, we were a little concerned at the fact that we were placed in the Indian room where the children were being entertained. This in itself wasn't the problem, the fact that there were no adults to supervise the kids was. After expressing my concerns to a couple of the parents, Louis turned up. He seemed to be some sort of child minder, however I use this word in its loosest sense, as all he seemed to do was sit immobile in a chair grinning. The grin was somewhat reminiscant of Jack Nicholsons performance in the Shining and I think given the chance I would rather have left the kids unattended. Predictably as boredom set in the kids began to explore, and it was reported that his Grace, who was in residence at the time, was none too impressed by gangs of kids rampaging through his flowerbeds!
I've just encountered an interesting problem. We switched our catering units to Fairtrade a while back and since then we have used only Fairtrade sugar on the candy floss carts. Whilst picking up some sugar from a supermarket for a last minute job I took the time to read the blurb on the back of 2 different packets. The Tate and Lyle packet made a big splash about how they were switching their entire production in this country to Fairtrade and were bringing the sugar in from 3rd world producers. Silver Spoon on the other hand made a big deal of the fact that they support British farmers by using British sugar beet, also their sugar is transported only a few miles thus being much better for the environment.
The dilemma is do we continue with our Fairtrade policy and save the 3rd world, or switch to Silver Spoon and save the environment?
The very first stall of my own that I operated was a shooting gallery. It used the Brocock range of pistols which looked like real guns and used a clever system of mini air cartridges which resembled bullets. You charged the cartridge up, placed a pellet in the end and then loaded the pistol just like you see the cowboys doing it on telly. You then had 6 rapid shots, opened the cylinder and ejected the used shells. Great fun and a successful game. A few year ago the law changed and these guns were outlawed. They now carry a 5 year prison sentence for possessing one. It seems that some criminals were having the guns altered to actually fire .22 calibre live ammunition. Now I am not allowed to use these guns because they in theory can be converted to fire live rounds. I can however quite legally use the firearms exemption certificate that I have been granted, to buy guns that have been manufactured to fire live rounds from the very start, really logical.
Whilst running around Yorkshire recently trying to find some replacement cork guns for one of our corporate games units, I was relating this scenario to the lady in charge of the gun dealers I was patronising. It turned out she had a better story. It seems that a young 16 year old employee at the store had applied for and been granted a firearms certificate, so he can quite legally buy rifles and live ammunition from the aforementioned store. However because he is under 18 they cannot legally allow him to buy an air rifle or pellets? as it is classed as unsafe. What sort of morons sit in their ivory towers making up these deranged rules?
The recent event we attended at Yarm, (the revival of its gala after about 70 years) turned out to be quite a success. We only attended with a Big Wheel, helter skelter, round stall and catering unit, due to the fact that we were positioned right outside a shop that is renowned for its rabid opposition to Yarm fair. The shops owner must have an automatic system for complaining to the local papers, as one year when the fair was a week later than normal, his objection was printed on the normal dates moaning about the fair being in town when it wasn't!
Anyway to make matters easier I had arranged with the town council to have a section of the high street coned off to allow me to pull the helter skelter on and Micheal to pull the wheel into position, the idea being that the two biggest items were to be set up the day before. I was pulling on at 6am and had arranged for Micheal to get there around 7. I turned up a little after 6 and the area was coned off alright, unfortunately there was a Lexus car parked right in the middle of where Micheal was due to stand. I got set and when Micheal arrived we measured up to see if we could squeeze in anywhere. Unfortunately the car was positioned in the perfect place to prevent the wheel building up. I telephoned the local constabulary and told them the problem, and they told me they would be in touch. About an hour later having heard nothing, I rang the chairman of the local council and asked him to ring the police for me. Within 5 minutes a traffic car turned up. I explained the problem to the officer and he promised o try and sort something out. He returned 10 minutes later and told me that the car was registered to an estate agents that didn't open until after half nine. He then tried the car door and it opened! Not what you would expect from a 2 year old Lexus. I asked if we could push it out of the way, but he flatly refused, (if we had tried the door it would have been half way down the high street and we would be built up already), I asked if the car could be towed, which we have had done in the past, most notably at Northallerton Mayfair. What happened there was the police rang the number for the registered owner of that car and his wife answered, "You husband's car is causing an obstruction in Northallerton High Street" say's Mr Police man, "No my husband is in Peterborough on business", replies Mrs inconsiderate car drivers wife, "Its definitely in Northallerton" challenges our friendly police officer, "Definitely is not" was the wife's reply. In the end the police had the vehicle removed and it transpired that the car driver was engaged in a clandestine affair with a young lady living just off the high street!
Unfortunately this police officer told us that they couldn't remove the car as it was not causing an obstruction on the high way, he then went on to explain that we would just have to wait until they could contact the owner and have the car moved. My problem was that we had a 75ft long vehicle blocking one side of the road in a town that after 8am is tremendously busy. "I'm in charge of the traffic here," stated the officer, "I will ensure you do not get a ticket for parking." We actually sat there until nearly 11 o'clock before the bloody car driver had sobered up enough to move, and true to his word the police officer ensured we didn't get ticketed, much to the chagrin of the local traffic gastapo, sorry traffic warden. We did have a bus driver shouting at us about making the access to the turning circle tight, why he had to shout is beyond me, if he had asked us to back up ten feet we would happily have done so.
When we started this blog it was meant to be a mix of information on the fairground industry, personal views and a lighthearted look at our adventures (and misadventures) in the world of corporate entertainment.
Over time the stories of Arthur have attracted a steady following. Indeed its quite normal on meeting a client for the first time for them to become excited at the thought of meeting Arthur in the flesh. One lady I met commented on how much she enjoyed the stories of the, as she put it, "idiot you have wrapped around your neck." Indeed she was quite put out that due to the pressures of our workload, I haven't been keeping the blog updated as much as I would like. Anyway for all those fans of Arthur we now have a range of t-shirts available to show your appreciation of him. They can be ordered by sending an email to ila@funfairgames.net . Arthur would also like it to be known that he is quite amenable to appearing on talk shows or opening the odd village fete or shopping centre.
I tend to read a lot, everything from fiction through to autobiographies. Reading the success stories of many businesses it seems they have a commen thread, an individual with exceptional drive, energy and flair. Within our business that person is Arthur. Pictured below is this human dynamo at the recent ball we operated at in Bristol.
What happened is that Arthur was running a college event Friday night into Saturday morning in Durham. I travelled to Birmingham to begin setting up for a large event for Mid Counties Co-Operative. On Saturday Arthur collected me from Durham and we set off for Bristol to supply attractions at the Goldneys Charity Ball. By this time both Arthur and I were feeling the effects of lack of sleep. On arriving at the Bristol venue it didn't help to discover that we had to carry everything for about a thousand yards to set up.
For the past 3 years we have provided attractions to the annual Thornbridge Hall open day. This is one of the most stunning private estates in the country, and the 6th July is one of the very few days that members of the public are allowed into the estate.
The event in Yarm is a revival of a community festival that hasn't been held in over 100 years, a major brewery has agreed to sponsor the event and there seems to be a good line up of attractions. We are presenting a small Victorian style funfair in keeping with the theme.
Of the other events listed here, Gainsborough Riverside Festival will see us presenting another fair after the unqualified success of last year. This time they are allowing us to operate on the Sunday as well, in addition the other established fairs in the town have been canceled this year, so that can only help.
The Durham event is a new one so its a bit of a leap in the dark, but it sees us continuing our relationship with the City, where we have quite a number of upcoming events.
The recent Green City Days festival in Sheffield, which we presented under the Universal Funfairs banner along with Yorkshire showman James Holmes saw us undertake the first working trials or our bio diesel initiative. We have been running a test generator on various blends for a while, but this was the first time we used it to actually operate at an event.
Most of the generators there were on various blends from B5 upto about B30 (30% bio), but one of our Kubota sets was taken all the way upto B100 (pure bio). We had to change the filter mid way through the event as a precaution, but other than that it worked excellently. We are now taking our other small generators upto B100 fuel with the intention that by the end of June all of our smaller events will be powered 100% from fuel made from waste vegetable oil.
From a business point of view, most of the family attractions at the event did quite well. The games units and catering were a bit poor which is surprising, but children's rides and bigger rides such as the waltzer rode well.
The organisers were so pleased that they have already offered us a number of other events, and representatives from other councils who were visiting the festival have asked about presenting something similar in there own Boroughs.
"The diligent farmer plants trees, of which he himself will never see the fruit."
— Cicero
Our environmental sustainability project is progressing nicely. We have the biodegradable consumables and recycling schemes working well, we are using Fairtrade products as standard and our on site waste composter is steaming away merrily. At an event we are running over the weekend, not only are we complying with the schemes we have set up, but the other catering units on site have also fallen into line so hopefully things are spreading outwards from our initial project.
THe second phase of our policy will see us make the switch to bio diesel, engineered from waste vegetable oil. The test bed system we are running is already using a B50 blend (50% bio fuel). Over the next couple of weeks we intend to raise this to B100 (pure bio diesel). Once that has happened and the system runs reliably, we will be making the changeover with our other units. We then intend to have the generating sets repainted in a bright green, and vinyl lettering applied to the sides of each set giving details of the fact that they are environmentally friendly. The main thrust of this bio fuel scheme was to lower emissions and obviously mineral oil consumption, but a handy side effect is the fact that bio diesel is classed as a non hazardous substance when spilt, and evidently degrades at the same speed sugar does. This should help our marketing efforts when applying for sites in public parks and near rivers etc.
We have also received our first Gary Cooper speech of the season, for the uninitiated, this is where one of the older funfair operators (think Jurassic period) decides that an event we are involved with should belong to him because of some divine providence. This usually results in warnings of extreme calamity to be visited upon us. Oh well, we haven't had one for a while so I suppose life would become a bit boring without them.
As mentioned in a previous post, we have formed a joint vebture with another operator to acquire and run a number of events in the Yorkshire region. The first of these is in Sheffields Hillsborough Park and the microformat is below for anyone that can make use of the standard;
We have taken and organised the first event in a little over 2 weeks, which didn't leave us a lot of time to put everything into place, the new company logo is shown below, although this is a first draft and it will evolve with time.
We received one piece of really bad news this week, a star of one of our previous posts, Paul suffered a massive stroke in his bed a couple of days ago. Only 38 he is currently in a critical condition in a local hospital.
Over the last few years, we have moved most of our business away from traditional fairgrounds and into the corporate arena. However we do take on new funfairs from time to time depending on our corporate workload. Recently we were offered the chance to form a joint venture with another operator to take on a number of new events in the Sheffield area. Although we haven't decided on a trading title yet, we have just secured the first of these events in Hillsborough park over the whitsun bank holiday.
The flyer is pictured below;
It looks a promising event and I will include a full write up here after it has taken place. One of the deciding factors in winning this was our environmental policy, and we will be placing recycling stations and waste collection services around the site.
Arthur and I were at 3 different events last weekend. At the first of these, we supplied a number of attractions for a private party just North of Newcastle upon Tyne. The estate was absolutely stunning, and must be one of the most impressive private homes we have ever operated at. After setting everything up, the transit van and trailer we were using sank in the soft ground. After 2 hours of trying to dig it out and extricate it using skidmats we were well and truly stuck. Just then the estate owner walked up, dropped a set of keys in my hand and said "I'll leave this with you lads."
As he walked off I spotted the vehicle he had left us, an American Hummer, the smaller version of the American military Humvee off roader. When I say smaller, its all relative, the Hummer was smaller than say Mount Everest, but still larger than anything we possess other than our Heavy transport vehicles. Anyway I jumped in, we chained it to the Transit/trailer combination and I set off backwards, it pulled them with real ease, all the more impressive when you consider that I hadn't given Arthur time to jump in the tranny, and the handbrake was still on.
After our successful extraction, I jumped out to let Arthur have a turn. He moved about 3 feet backwards, stopped, jumped out and said "I don't like it, its too big. " I suppose with him being little it made it seem relatively bigger than it did to us normal people.
On the day the event went well, right upto the de rig and removal of everything. We had contracted someone in with a children's ride as ours were all booked up. Micheal has attended various events with us and helps us out on occasion. As he was exiting the site, he had trouble passing a large bush and didn't want to scratch his new pick up. So he decided to trim the bush back. He stepped on a very large branch to give himself room to cut it, his foot slipped and the aforementioned branch sprung back up, depositing Micheal on his backside and breaking his nose, not to mention knocking his glasses off and cutting his eyelids open!
I rang a few days later to check on him and he was sore but recovering.
"The superior man seeks what is right; the inferior one, what is profitable."
— Confucius
After talking to a number of people and researching the subject as much as I can, I've decided to begin an experiment with one of our generators and biodiesel. After the upcoming Northallerton Mayfair, I have a few days breathing space. I've chosen one of our smaller Kubota engined generators to be a test bed. A local company produces biodiesel, and I am going to blend a mix and see just how this particular engine takes to it.
I think a weak blend would be best to start with, perhaps a B10 (10% biodiesel, 90% mineral diesel). If it performs ok on this then it can be increased until it either reaches the point the engine doesn't run smoothly, or it reaches B100 which is pure biodiesel.
There are two reasons behine this test. Firstly it fits in with our environmental policy. Secondly, the rate that fuel costs are increasing, it is reaching the stage where we are considering investing in a micro plant for producing biodiesel, either from virgin vegatable oil, or from waste cooking oil. The current exemption from duty of 2500 litres per person, would be enough to power all of our generators, and make a start on some of our transport costs. If we can reduce our fuel bill by twenty five percent, that is more than enough to pay for the costs of acquiring the biodiesel processing system.
The Swedish Jora, waste digester that is being mounted in one of our vehicles turned up this morning. Like most things Swedish it is flat packed! Admittedly the instructions are easier to follow than ikea wardrobes, but it still took a bit of headscratching and a couple of false starts before we finally had it together. Starting tomorrow we will start adding waste food to begin the composting process.
Arthur and I spent most of today visiting the RSVP exhibition in Manchester. It was held in the Gmex centre, now being called Manchester Central. For a major exhibition venue the signposting was absolutely ridiculous, after passing Leeds, the signposts disappeared, and we ended up using sat nav to zero in on the location.
Whilst at the event, we wandered past a stand containing a caricaturist, who promptly dashed off a drawing of Arthur and I, pictured below!
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us. ~Henrik Tikkanen
As part of our ongoing environmental strategy, we are supporting National Compost Awareness Week. We have a Swedish made hot composter for disposing of our food and biodegradable consumables waste, which seems be working well. However we have now decided to expand upon this idea by installing a hot composter, along with its supporting ancilliaries, into one of our prime mover (heavy transport vehicles). This will be ideal for events that last more than one day, meaning food and other degradable waste can be disposed of immediately, instead of either being stored for transport back to our base, or disposed of into landfill.
We have received a number of offers of events from new clients based on our "green" policies, so things seem to be panning out as we wanted with an increase in work helping to offset the money we are spending on things like recycling stations etc.
We are also waiting for a consultation with a bio diesel expert who can hopefully advise us on what we would need to do to switch our generators over to more sustainable fuels. If the switch is possible then we are looking at obtaining a micro biofuel processing system that we have found. Basically you pour waste cooking oil into the bottom of it, add a few chemicals and eight hours later you can pump the fuel straight into your vehicle. WIth the ridiculous cost of fuel it is a system that would probably pay for itself pretty quickly.
Now not many people know this, but Arthur is a registered minister. Honestly, it has to be admitted he is registered in some obscure American state, but registered he is. He had intended to become a Bishop, but that was more expensive.
Anyway, we are just putting together the finishing touches to a large private event. Arthur is the man on the ground and has been liaising with the client. During their discussions, Arthur's theological leanings came up. A few days later the client contacted Arthur to invite him to perform the christening ceremony that the event is in support of. After due consideration, Arthur declined due to a sudden attack of morality (he thought that being registered in America might not be valid in the UK.)
Now this is utterly astounding, Arthur developing morals is akin to Lord Lucan winning the Grand National whilst mounted on Shergar! I am friends with a minister (a proper English one), and I did suggest we hired him, but Arthurs new found moral high ground precluded this also.
This summer is fast turning into one heck of a line up. Some weekends we have seven or eight events on simultaneously. Not little single item events, but some of them complete fairgrounds. One particular weekend has us operating in Birmingham, Stoke, Cornwall, Exeter, Malmesbury and Cambridge. We have also just received confirmation that every major event we supplied attractions to last season has re-booked us.
We have just began to replace the drive systems on our children's rides with energy efficient alternatives. The existing systems consist of 110V D.C. motors that are supplied via a step down transformer. The voltage from this transformer is rectified to change it from alternating current (standard household type electricity) to direct current (an older system that was widespread in industry in the past). This rectified power is then fed through a variable resistor which turns a lot of it into waste heat and uses the remainder to power the ride.
This has been swapped for an electronic inverter system which takes standard household voltage and turns it into a 3 phase industrial supply. The main advantage of this is that there is very little heat produced, and on the toyset ride, the power consumption for the drive has fallen from around 10 amps to less than 3. We use much less fuel to power it, and smaller more efficient generators can be employed to further reduce costs and emissions.
An additional benefit is that previously the drive control had to be altered each ride depending on how many children were riding. Now the electronic system keeps the speed at a preset level automatically, which helps improve safety.
We organised a large private funfair for the Student Loans Company at their new HQ in Darlington last weekend (30 March 2008). We used the event to launch the first phase of our new environmental policy.
None of us knew what sort of notice the patrons would take of the various recycling stations we had placed around the site and at the various catering units, but I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised, with a couple of minor exceptions virtually all of the rubbish created at the event was placed in the correct bin. At the end of the day we were left with around 12 bins full of recyclable rubbish and 6 of non recyclable. Ideally we would like to be able to recycle everything, but for the first attempt we had still reduced the level of waste going to landfill by two thirds, compared to what it would have been previously.
The day before the Darlington event we had presented 4 attractions at a private wedding in the Derby area. On the way to the venue the value of our cheap Garmin sat nav proved itself yet again. The high tech Tom Tom I was using got us to within half a mile of the venue but it still took us around half an hour to actually find it. The cheaper Garmin unit took the driver straight to the gate of the field the event was being held in, it doesn't play music, games, do funny voices, it just gets you from A to B with the minimum of fuss. The wedding was like most wedding we have attended, real fun. The bride at this one was of Irish heritage, and I have to say her Irish brethren knew how to enjoy themselves. A ceilidh band playing Irish music had the whole room bouncing.
After the event, we found that due to heavy rain our transit van was marooned. It took Paul (a member of staff) and I around 20 minutes to use skidmats to extricate the van from the field. As we were almost onto the hard ground I put my foot down to ensure the van kept going, as I did so I heard a muffled howl. When I finally reached the road, I stopped to wait for Paul, only to see a tall mud coloured apparition lurching towards me. As it came nearer it turned into a roughly Paul shaped thing. Seemed he had been standing directly behind a wheel when I put my foot down and the resulting spray of mud from the spinning wheel covered him from head to toe. We had to stop while Paul got changed and I laughed so much I cried.
"It's a job that's never started that takes the longest to finish."
— J.R.R. Tolkien
We are pulling together the strands for the initial phase of our green policy. On Saturday we are presenting a large private funfair for a corporate client in the North East. In readiness for this we have a number of different recycling bins and the first of our new recycling stations. The station is almost finished, it would have been ready, but in conjunction with our green initiative we have also decided to publicise the upcoming Keep Britain Tidy campaign which is focusing on reducing cigerettes that are thrown on the ground. To this end we have ordered some wall mounted cigerette bins which will be mounted on the front of the recycling stations along with posters advertising the campaign.
In keeping with our green policy we have managed to build the recycling stations out of around 80% recycled materials, mainly steel which has been recovered from side stalls that we no longer use.
The catering units operating at this launch event have been stocked up with biodegradable plates, cups, napkins and utensils. Our microbial waste digester hasn't been delivered yet but hopefully that will be here this week.
We have also begun implementation of DEFRA's voluntary code of practice for waste from mobile food units., and signed up with the Green Achiever scheme where we have committed to reducing our waste and energy requirements.
Some of the venues we visit are absolutely stunning, (although it has to be admitted that some of them stun me for other reasons). Anyway I have just rolled in from another trip to the smoke. This time the venue was the Tower Hotel, nestled pretty much between Tower Bridge and the Tower Of London, this is the view from out of the window.
The same week Arthur and I had a trip through to one of our upcoming venues to meet with the safety planning group. I had to pick Arthur up from Conisborough where he was operating at an established event run by another company. I arrived to collect him just as he jumped out of a lorry cab and twisted his ankle. As he lay there looking at me imploringly trying to telepathically tell me he didn't want to come, I cheerfully told him to stop snivelling and get in the car. He spent the rest of the day giving any ladies we met puppy dog eyes and explaining how much pain he was in. I spent the rest of the day telling them what a drama queen he was and that he would be alright once he had spent some time in a public house.
Whilst we await completion of our resource recovery units ready for the launch of our 'green' policy at the end of the month, I have been looking into other ways of reducing our carbon footprint. Whilst doing this the idea of carbon offsets came up. Basically for the uninformed, this is where we calculate the amount of co2 we are responsible for producing and then pay a third party who use the money to make improvements somewhere else in the world that reduces carbon emissions by the same amount as we are putting out.
There are a number of different companies that will do this for us, the thing that is annoying me is the fact that the british based companies charge between £6 and £20 per tonne for this service, yet a number of American based firms can provide the same service for around £2.50 per tonne. So once again, its rip off Britain time. Virtually everything you wish to price up in this country is at least double the cost of its equivalent in the States. A newspaper article once claimed that secret negotiations had taken place to make the U.K. the 51st state of America. Well the sooner the better!
Although I strive to present a professional image (hard sometimes when Arthur is with me), there are occasions when my tact and diplomacy appears to come straight out of the German Gestapo's handbook. The Evening Gazette has just run a story about the launch of our Environmental policy, click here for details. During the conversation with the reporter I made a comic remark about being hit over the head by a compost bin, only to see the line appear in print. Oh well, won't be the first time my strange sense of humour rears its head.
I attended another of Leeds Mets networking events recently, Arthur was supposed to be there with me, unfortunately the day before he had been doing a bit of work on something and managed to get a bit of rust in his eye. He rang me about half way to Leeds to tell me he couldn't see out of one eye and was driving himself to the hospital. Why he couldn't drive to Leeds is beyond me, good job Admiral Nelson didn't have the same attitude or we would all be speaking French now.
I've stated before that I always enjoy visits up North. Today we ended up at Middlesbrough, which is my hometown. This was in support of Middlesbrough Environment City, an organisation set up in the 90's to promote environmental sustainability. The event was promoting Middlesbrough councils support of Fairtrade fortnight, and we supplied one of our Victorian candy floss carts giving away free Fairtrade candy floss. This is one of 3 events involving North East local authorities that we are supplying candy floss to. One of the events will see us sending an espresso coffee cart along with Fairtrade tea and coffee.
Whilst in the Boro, I had a walk around the town, I hadn't realised just how much development was going in in the area. Captain Cook's Square where we were operating looked really fresh, and was busy all day long. Other parts of the area that I remember as run down last time I was there have suddenly been transformed into eyecatching new properties, so it's nice to see some money being spent in that part of the country.
Whilst we were there a photographer from a North East based newspaper turned up. I thought it was for the event, but it seems she had come especially to see me. The paper had picked up on our recent environmental initiative and will be running an article in print about it.
Well its been an unusual week this last one. About 1 am the other morning I suddenly woke after hearing what I thought was my daughter falling down the stairs. After rushing out of the bedroom in a panic I could see she hadn't. My wife thought that someone we had asked to leave our property (people seem to like parking in my front drive) and received a mouthful of abuse from had come back and rammed the house with something, so she was running around the house looking for signs of damage. After a while we decided it must have been a joint bad dream and went back to bed. We found out the next morning that we had experienced an earthquake, which to be fair is not something you expect in West Yorkshire!
Anyhow back to our efforts to save the planet, the main recycling bins were delivered the other day, ready to be built into mobile recycling points. We hope to launch them at an upcoming event in Darlington. The bins in question are ideal for outside use at larger events, but we have many indoor events with our candy floss carts etc. To solve this we have bought a number of miniature 3 way recycling step bins with the idea to place one at the foot of each cart, candy floss, popcorn, coffee etc.
They are a nice stainless steel item and look classy enough for our more prestigious events.
Coming from the North East I always like it when we have an event in the area. I'm writing this having just returned from Stockton on Tees which is just down the road from my hometown of Middlesbrough. Now I like Stockton, but when it comes to operating there I am beginning to think there is a vicious little gremlin lurking about, and for once I am not talking about Arthur!
At the back end of last season we operated there and the details of that episode can be found here This time we were presenting a couple of carts (coffee and candy floss) in support of the town centres Fairtrade initiative. I got there nice and early expecting Arthur to be waiting as he was coming half the distance I was, but he wasn't . About half an hour after arriving my phone rang and Arthur explained that a gust of wind had hit his vehicle on route and damaged the candy floss cart, he was limping back to the depot at Houghton le Spring and then coming through without the cart, we would just have to use one cart with both products. So I set to work assembling the coffee cart, it was like a scene from the 3 stooges, as fast as I put something together it blew apart in the gale force gusts. Eventually I managed the get the barrow assembled as well as the frame for the stall which was to cover the cart, Arthur and I and protect us from the weather. At that point a van full of workmen rolled up. The gangmaster jumped out shaking his head. "What's up I enquired?", and he proceeded to point out that the yellow marks the cart was stood on, marked the spot where his team where just about to dig a big hole. I rang the town centre management team that had positioned me there and they came over. After a while it was decided that I would have to move about 15 feet, so I got to work disassembling the bloody cart.
Arthur eventually rolled up just in time to help me put the cover on. By now the wind had got event stronger, we struggled for quarter of an hour with Arthur insisting we could get the cover on and I taking the opposite viewpoint. At one point we were both balanced on the frame of the stall trying to pull the cover over, when a guest of wind blew the cover with Arthur and I still attached, straight off. It was at this point Arthur decided I was right after all.
We went to explain our predicament to the organisers only to be told that everything was being cancelled due to the 50 MPH wind.
On a brighter note I have just managed to source 100% biodegradable cups for the coffee barrow at a price not much above that of normal cups. This was a relief as up till this point It looked like we were going to have to pay around 3 times the normal price which would have hurt a bit, but it goes to prove that a little shopping around can save you a fortune.
There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed. ~Mohandas K. Gandhi
After making the decision to go green, we've put some extra effort into examining our basic operations, finding what we can alter quickly, easily and economically, and putting this into practice. Going ahead with the easier options first means that whilst we are trying to solve the more difficult problems we are still making a difference, however small it may be.
The major waste production at our events is centred around the catering operations. We have ordered a number of waste recycling stations for use at our events. These will be set up so that aluminium cans, plastic bottles and waste paper can be easily placed into the correct container by members of the public. We have arranged with a number of organisations for them to take delivery of this waste stream. The cans are actually a valuable commodity, we have decided that any returns from them will be reinvested into our recycling efforts. The plastic and paper won't earn any revenue, but they will be taken out of landfill so that is a benefit in itself.
Our coffee carts are being switched to 100% biodegradable cups. The lids aren't available in a degradable form as yet, but a mini version of our recycling station will be sited with a coffee cart to enable the plastic lids to be collected for recycling. The teabags and used coffee grinds will also be collected and forwarded to a gardening company we deal with, it seems they make excellent compost.
With the best intention in the world, we are still going to be left with some waste that we cannot recycle and is going to end up in landfill. We are using biodegradable refuse bags to transport the rubbish in so at least the amount of plastic we dump will be reduced.
Clear candy floss bags in biodegradable form are proving a bit more problematic. The best price we have found so far is around 6 times that of normal bags, which is a bit steep. We will keep looking and eventually I have no doubt that we will source something more affordable. That will only leave us with the candy floss sticks to deal with. Being made of wood the hope is that we will be able to drop them in at a wood recyclers.
As soon as one of the recycling stations turn up I will post some photos here, in the meantime I'm off the try and find some accurate information on the level of biodiesel an unmodified engine can tolerate.
Just occasionally, something happens that restores my faith in human nature. We've just supplied a candy floss cart for a marketing event for the Market Walk Shopping Centre in the Lancashire town of Chorley. We were hired to give out free candy floss for St Valentines day in conjunction with a shopping precinct. Now normally when undertaking events of this type the conversation runs like this; "How much is your candy floss?" "It's complimentary sir" "Yes but how much is it?" "It is free" "Oh, in that case I will take three bags, might as well if it's free"
This time however things were different, those people with more than one kid seemed genuinely embarrassed when they asked if they could take another bag, and I lost count of how many people on being told the candy floss was free, asked if we had a charity collection tin they could put some money in. That's the first time I can remember receiving a reaction like that.
We are now running out of time, and the question now is not what is happening to the climate, but how bad will it be before the world, starts doing enough? - Jonathon Porritt (2007)
Climate change and sustainability is rapidly becoming the hottest topic ever. No one in the developed world today can be ignorant of the damage that is being inflicted upon the planet by the industrial nations of the world. This is all well known and documented, what is not, is the solution. Respected scientists are still arguing over the cause and effect of global warming, with one camp claiming it is all down to human activities, whilst others claim that mankind itself contributes less than one percent of the emissions into the atmosphere, with the bulk coming from rotting vegetation and methane emitted by the digestive process of cattle? Similarly it has been stated that if Britain cut its emissions to zero, the developing nation of China would make up the shortfall in a short space of time, so what is to be done?
We don't claim to know any better than the academia of the world, but we feel that mankind is contributing to this global crises, and we are obligated to look for ways of cutting our emissions and waste products. A chinese philosopher , Lao-tzu once said "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", and we feel that climate change is like this journey. Every little step from whatever source will help us towards the eventual goal.
We have just finalised our Environmental Policy Statement, a copy of which will be supplied to our clients as part of the comprehensive safety dossier we present before any event. We have also put together our initial Environmental action plan, which is a list of what we would like to do to help achieve our aim of becoming the most environmentally friendly funfair operators in the U.K. Much of what is contained in this action plan is easily achievable, and indeed we are already doing it. Small things like using only recycled paper and printer cartridges in our office, (we used approximately 15,000 sheets of paper last year), asking our clients to accept PDF documents, instead of hardcopy , we estimate that we saved an extra 30% use of paper last year and hope to double that this year.
Most of our events are for corporate clients rather than members of the public, but we do have a number of events that are run along the lines of traditional fairgrounds, and need to be promoted to attract people to them. We have redesigned our advertising strategy to use posters that are undated, allowing them to be recovered and reused. We have an in house vinyl graphics machine and make use of this to produce advertising material that can be altered quickly, inexpensively and in an environmentally friendly way.
Use of fossil fuels is probably one of the biggest topics regarding emissions. Many fairground vehicles are custom built systems incorporating built in games units, generating plant and sometimes rides. It isn't possible to just replace these with newer vehicles that have better emissions ratings. Indeed it wouldn't really be good for the environment as they tend to do relatively low mileage, and the raw materials used and emissions created by replacing them would outweigh any benefits gained.
Biofuels hold the promise of a more sustainable future, but they are not really the answer at the moment. It isn't possible with many engines to just replace the diesel fuel with a 100% biofuel equivalent. Most engines will run on a blend, and that is one avenue we are following. When our current agreement with our fuel card supplier expires, we intend to begin using the Rix Petroleum Green card. Rix have a number of service stations dispensing a biofuel blend, and if you have to use a station that doesn't stock this blend, you use normal fuel, and Rix then place an equivalent amount of bio blend into the system so you are in effect offsetting you use of fossil fuels to a degree.
We are also looking at a way to convert our generating plant to the use of biofuel. One possibility, depending on cost, is to purchase a micro biofuel production plant. These are available in versions that produce around 200 litres of fuel at a time. Not enough for our transport needs, but they would provide a blend that could reduce our use of fossil fuel, and if they work well enough the system could be expanded.
We already use a large number of wastebins at our events, so theoretically it should not be too difficult to have them set up for different types of waste, with the idea being to then separate the recyclable items and transport them to a plant that can make use of them, the left over litter would be disposed of as normal, but it should hopefully be less than it is at the moment.
The action plan we have put together is due to be reviewed every quarter, so as it becomes clear what is and isn't working we can adapt it to be more effective. Updates will be posted on this blog concerning both what we have and have not been able to do with the state of current technology.
Coupled with our recent Fairtrade initiative, we hope that we can help make a difference, no matter how small.
One of the best things about our move into the corporate entertainment industry has been the number of stunning venues that we have operated at. The latest of these was the Wallace collection in Manchester Steet London.
This event was the 100th birthday party of Mills and Boon, the romantic novel publisher and was designed to bring together their editors, publishers and authors in a birthday bash. The theme was PINK, with the room being decorated with coloured spotlights and giant flamingo stilt walkers greeting the guests. We only received confirmation of the event on Monday morning, and the event was being held on Thursday, which resulted in a couple of days rushed activity to respray one of our candy floss carts in pink tones to fit in with the theme. We pride ourselves on our customisation service, although we do tend to like a bit more notice.
In the event the event was stunning, with Greek tenor Attila serenading the guests while waiters handed the ladies Roses. Alan Titchmarsh gave the opening speech, followed by a couple of senior executives from the Mills and Boon and Harlequin companies.
At one point Venessa Feltz came over for a candy floss, and I have to say that she looked really well. I know television is supposed to add pounds to your appearance, but she looked slim and healthy.
We operate a lot in the London area nowadays, so most of the little foibles such as the congestion charge and red routes hold no surprises for us. We were however caught out by one little item. The venue unfortunately had no parking or unloading facility and London seems packed with eager traffic wardens. We ended up parked on double yellow lines waiting for the loading doors to be opened, all the time a traffic warden was stood across the road watching. The usual procedure is as soon as you step out of the vehicle and open the back doors, he pounces. I decided to take the bull by the horns and sauntered across to speak to him. After asking for the best place to unload he pointed out a small piece of road, about 8 feet long with a single yellow line, "You are allowed twenty minutes there to unload."
Nineteen minutes later I jumped in the van to find a parking space for the night, I circled the block until I came across an empty slot and parked up. Approaching the meter with a handful of coins I got a surprise, London parking meters no longer accept cash! I rang Arthur, gave him all the details and walked back to the venue for the start of the event. Ten minutes later Arthur rang, "I can't get the pay by phone system to work!", (didn't want to pay the seventy five pence more likely). Looking at my watch it was quarter past six, after half six parking is free, but knowing my luck I would probably get a ticket in the meantime, so I ended up sprinting back to the van, then driving round the block for fifteen minutes.
During the event, we receive an email for another corporate client who wanted a candy floss cart for a St Valentines event. They specified a pink cart so the spray job ended up serving its purpose better than we expected.
Take a look at the slogan above, its used by Fedex, a multinational parcels company. Now I don't use them, I use either Parcel Force or Interlink. Recently however I ordered some printed goods from an Australian based company who use Fedex for their deliveries.
After placing the order you are supplied with a tracking number which allows you to go online and see where your parcel is, allegedly. I monitored the progress of my delivery noting that 24hours after dispatch, it had travelled from Australia to England, so far so good. It was then scheduled for delivery to me on Tuesday.
Nearing theclose of business tuesday I still hadn't received the package so I rang the helpline and gave them the tracking number. The voice on the other line came back with a smug tone, "It hasn't been delivered because you have given us the wrong address", "Really", I replied, "Could you read the address back to me please", which she promptly did, guess what, it was in fact the correct address. After pointing this fact out she asked me if I was sure, "Of course I'm sure, it is the same address that Securicor, Parcel Force, Interlink, Royal Mail and TNT use when they deliver to me". After a moments thought she apologised and assured me that it would definitely, certainly be delivered on Wednesday.
Wednesday, near the end of delivery times I was still empty handed, so I rang back. "Oh, dear," said the voice on the telephone, "It hasn't been rescheduled for delivery, Miss X will look into what has happened and ring you back." Two hours later Miss X hadn't contacted me so I re rang Fedex. "Really sorry, Miss X is on the other line and will ring you back shortly.", "That's fine," I said, "But tell Miss X that time is of the essence, and I need the goods by 12 Noon tomorrow or you can return them to the sender."
I still didn't receive a call that evening, way to go Fedex customer services! The next morning Miss X did indeed ring, "Very sorry, its all been sorted and you're parcel will be with you before noon." At least that's something I thought. How wrong I was, at 12.30 I re rang Fedex yet again and spoke to Miss X. She rang me back with the information that 'everything is O.K., the driver will be with you in an hour, "That's good", I remarked, "I am now on my way to London, so will your driver be following me?" "Oh, well we can resend it tomorrow" "Tell you what ", I finally decided, "I will arrange for a PROFESSIONAL parcel company to collect it from you and deliver it to me, in the meantime you might like to consider employing Mr Bean and Frank Spencer to increase the quality of your services!"
Now I fully accept that things go wrong, every parcel firm I have ever used has let me down at some point, but usually when they do, they make damn sure that I have the parcel the first thing the following morning. Fedex managed non delivery 3 times in a row, and their customer service team did their best to ensure that I would never willingly use their services again.
The winter months are when we usually revamp our equipment, or take care of the myriad of non essential repairs and upgrades that seem difficult to fit into our schedule during the summer season. This year however has been totally different, we never stopped during January, with a number of events mainly in the London area.
February seemed to be quieter, so I decided to get stuck into some of the jobs. The first one being a strip down and rebuild of the braking system on the helter skelter. I was half way through this as the weekend came to a close, by lunchtime Monday (4th February) I was having to speed my schedule up due to the fact that within the space of 4 hours we had successfully negotiated and been awarded an extra 7 corporate events for this month, including a week long hire of the helter skelter by a promotions company.
Normally our best month for picking bookings up is March. This year December and January were about on par with the usual level of business we receive in March, February is looking like it is going to surpass that, and if the March bookings increase by the same proportion we are going to have one heck of a summer. I am thinking of submitting an application to higher powers to have a standard day increased to 36 hours to give us a chance at coping.
We ended last month by supplying a number of Victorian side stalls along with a candy floss and popcorn cart for the official opening of a Hotel in the London area. I have to say that it was one of the most pleasant events we have undertaken to date, the hotel management and staff were lovely, even reserving a room for us to change into uniforms before the event started. It probably helped that the assistant manager came from my home town of Middlesbrough and still supported the mighty Boro football team, so it gave us some common ground.
Towards the end of this month we are presenting attraction in 3 different North East town centres, when we have details and photos of the events I will place them in a later Blog post. This brings the number of new local authorities we have been invited to work with in the North East to 5, with a number of new events promised for the coming season including a new street fair (albeit a small one).
No matter how well something is planned, and how many backup plans you put in place, there is one thing you just cannot beat, Mother Nature. The other day I set off from West Yorkshire to travel to Gateshead, a distance of 98 miles, usually taking me a shade over 2 hours in a HGV. This time round, after almost three hours, I had just reached Wetherby, a distance of about 25 miles. The reason for this was an articulated vehicle on its side across two of the three carriageway's of the A1 motorway. As I finally reached the accident scene and inched past I expected to speed up. I hadn't however allowed for the fact that about 3 miles further on a second artic was laid on its side. In fact with the high winds there were a total of 6 rollovers along the A1, I passed a couple more which had ended up in farmers fields before coming to my second blockage of the A1 pictured below.
After passing this second accident, Sally traffic on radio 2 announced the closure of the A1 a bit further on. As I reached the closure I swung off the A1 on to the A19, only to find that was nose to tail as well. Deciding to give up at that point I took the next turning off the main road with the intention of heading home. Unfortunately I wasn't paying attention and picked a turnoff that didn't have access to the A19 South. Before I knew it I was in the middle of a small market town center which has a 7.5 tonne weight limit, not so much for the weight the roads can carry, but because the route through the town was very tight and not really made to carry long vehicles.
Eventually I extricated myself from the situation and managed to get myself back on the right road.
On a happier note I have managed to find time to add the new pdf brochure to our sidestall website. The brochure is pictured below, click on it to download the pdf file.
Clearing some old photos out, I came across the one pictured below which was the first side stall I had built on a vehicle. In this case a Ford Cargo seven and a half tonner, which gave sterling service for about 6 years before finally expiring with a bang on its very last journey. A con rod came through the side of the engine on the A1 about 3 miles from our depot. At the time I had lost my mobile phone and had to walk a mile to the nearest call box to ask my Father in Law to tow me in. On the way back to the vehicle I stopped and picked up the offending con rod from out of the middle of the carriageway.
I remember 2 incidents associated with this particular stall. The first was whilst I was in the middle of constructing it. At the time the stalls in the UK hadn't begun to take on the continental format of being built on trailers or lorries and being built big. Most stalls were still constructed from wood and stood about 7 feet tall. I designed and built this stall and it stood about 16 feet tall at its highest point. Whilst I was stood back looking at the height and planning the lighting system, another showman, an old timer, came sauntering up and casually remarked, "have you got your feet and inches mixed up son, that's far too tall for what its supposed to be". Well, within about three years, that particular stall went from being the biggest on most grounds to being distinctly average, with some 40ft long, 22 feet high examples appearing at the major fairs.
The second incident happened at the Leeds Asian Mela which was held in Roundhay Park. A member of the Showmen's Guild committee walked up as I was erecting the stall and told me that he wanted the artwork covering up. If you look at it you can just see that it contains scenes from the history of the Special Air Services Regiment. This gentleman claimed that the Asians at the event would be offended by it, jso it seems that political correctness isn't really a modern invention. Anyway I refused point black to cover it up and he said "On your head be it". In the event, not a single asian visitor mentioned the artwork, so it just goes to show that it's actually the liberal busybodies that are creating most of the tension in this country and everyone would be happier if we were left alone a little bit more just to get on with life.
During the winter month's I have made a re start on refurbishing the helter skelter. My first job is to get all of the brakes working 100%, something they have never seemed to do since we took delivery of it. I suppose the previous owner leaving it stood in the corner of his yard for some five or six years didn't really help, with part of the linkages and cylinders pretty much seizing up whenever the ride was sat for more than a few days.
I have virtually all of the system freed off, well greased and working OK. On the final wheel I came to the small cylinder that actuates the brake shoes was absolutely seized solid. I spent all morning hitting it with a hammer to try and force the piston out of the cylinder to no avail. My problem is that I tend to hit something with no luck for a while, then hit it harder and break it. I was worried about doing this as the axles come from an Austin FG lorry which went out of production around 1968! On a hunch I typed the part number into Ebay, and promptly found out that new cylinders are available for the princely sum of £25, not worth spending all day trying to knock one apart to repair.
We are in the process of adding a new feature to our websites, the Google button below enables you to subscribe to our network of sites, with the idea that once subscribed you can type a search term relating to the fairground into Google and as part of the listings information from our site will appear. At the moment I am still playing around with the system but click on the button to subscribe, then type funfair games into Google search and look at listing number 4, it should contain a link to our side stall website along with an image of one of our games units. We will eventually expand this system so that it will not only lead you to the correct part of one of our sites for whatever you are looking for, but it will also lead you to information sources so if you type in funfair history, it will take you to a page with a brief history of the funfair industry.
Our workload seems to be all southern based at the minute. No sooner had we arrived home from our trip to London for New Year than we were off back in a Southern direction for an event at a private house. Whilst checking the address on Google to make sure of our destination, I came across an advert for the house in question. It was up for sale with offers over £6,500,000 invited!
A couple of years ago we had a new house built. It was officially a conversion from a little chef restaurant, but in actuality there isn't much left of the original building. When it came to having the utilities connected, I expected it to be a simple and relatively inexpensive job, as we already had gas, water and electric supplies to the building. Boy was I wrong, the site surveyor from British Gas turned up, took one look and began sucking air through his teeth, "Gonna cost you a fortune for a gas connection mate, seeing as there is no gas here" "Yes there is" I replied, that nice big 2 inch pipe is full of it", "No its a dead pipe", was his expert reply. I promptly disproved this theory by glibly walking over too it, turning the valve on and listening to the high pressure rush of escaping gas with a triumphant smile on my face! "Still can't use it" says he. "Why the hell not" I demanded "Because it isn't on my plan, so officially it doesn't exist", oh great, so anything not on his plan is living in the twilight zone. After a seconds thought, I came up with a cunning plan straight out of Blackadder. "I don't need your services any longer Mr surveyor man, I am going to have a friend of mine connect us up to directly to the pipe, ha!" "That's theft son, call the police, you'll get locked up", which was a moot point, how could I steal something that officially didn't exist?
I was all for taking that line, but my significant other wouldn't hear of it, so in the end we agreed to let British Gas rip us off. They told us that we would have to arrange the digging of the trench from our property to the roadside, so the surveyor marked out the line of the trench and fixed a date for the connections team to turn up. Next day we hired a digger and dug the regulation depth trench straight across the property.
The big day turned up and the connections team arrived. After a full day digging exploratory holes around the end of the trench they still hadn't found the gas main. "Were gonna have to send someone else out tomorrow mate, we can't find it" The next day a new team of monkeys turned up. They decided to go all technical and use an electronic system that sensed the existing metal pipe connection so they could trace its route. Unfortunately they didn't connect the transmitter part of the system to the pipe, so instead of a nice detectable pulse being transmitted along the length of the pipe for them to sense, they walked aimlessly around in circles until suddenly the receiver they were holding began to beep. "Found it", monkey number one stated with absolute certainty and began to dig. This certainty lasted about ten minutes until he hit the electricity cable he had just detected. After four more similar misadventures they too decided they couldn't find it and we would have to wait a week or so until crew number three turned up.
Super crew duly turned up. After another half a day of fruitless digging (by now our front drive resembled the Somme after a particularly heavy bombardment), they announced that in fact, the gas main wasn't where the surveyor had told us, it was in fact in a completely different direction, running along a road on another side of our property. After a heated discussion and a call back to base he announced that British Gas would take responsibility for digging the next trench.
A couple of weeks went by before crew number four arrived, complete with a mini digger. They ripped another trench through our property and actually succeeded in finding and connecting us to the gas mains! As they finished and prepared to leave, the head monkey on the crew told me that in a couple of days a crew would turn up to fill in and retarmac the 70 feet long trench they had left. Sure enough withing two days a tarmacking team arrived, filled in almost three foot of trench and left the other 67 feet untouched.
What followed was another farce out of a Basil Fawlty comedy. I would ring up at the start of the week and complain about the trench. I would be assured that it would be filled in before the end of the week. The week would end and the trench would remain untouched. I would then ring up and the cycle would be repeated. This went on for three months before I finally availed myself of the services of a solicitor and managed to threaten BG into finishing the job.
A peaceful twelve months went by until a team turned up and announced that they were here to remove the existing pipe that didn't exist as it could be dangerous. They proceeded to begin digging holes where they thought the pipe would be and we ended up with a number of holes dotted about our drive yet again. The situation now is that after eight weeks the holes still haven't been sorted, so now I am about to begin a new tactic. On Monday morning I am going to ring up the emergency gas leak line and report a leak. When the British Gas monkeys turn up I am going to point the holes out and ask for them to be filled in. The next day I am going to repeat the process. I am going to do this everyday until either I die of old age or British Gas actually manage to finish a job they have begun.
I am slowly recovering this morning from our first event of the year. It was only a small event but nevertheless an enjoyable one. We provided a couple of Victorian style games units to a nightclub venue in London which makes it the earliest event of the year for us. They went down well and I think we could see some repeat bookings from the venue. We finished at two am and by the time we had dismantled and packed everything it was about two thirty. It must have taken us an hour to get through the traffic and out of London, the place was really buzzing. One thing I did notice was the catering supplier who operated at the side of us selling Thai food. They had NO washing facilities whatsoever, NO aprons or uniforms, NO electrical safety systems for their lighting and a bunch of gas cylinders all grouped together at the side of their open flame burner. Any of these failings is enough to send a health and safety officer into cardiac arrest whilst visiting a funfair, swiftly followed by an instruction to cease trading until everything is put right. If anyone from a local authority health department reads this could they explain to me why the funfair industry is so severely monitored, when every other Tom Dick and Harry can pretty much make their own rules up?
On the way in we spotted the new signs announcing the Low Emissions Zone (LEZ) Ken Livingstones latest attempt to extort money from everyone. Some of the fairground vehicles have managed to obtain an exemption from the charge for a period, but anyone who's vehicles don't qualify are looking at something like £200 plus PER DAY for using their vehicles in the capital, if Ken keeps it up he will single handedly be able to destroy the funfair industry in the capital.
This is our last post of 2007. Due to the success we have had with our specialised websites we have just added a new one. Side Stall hire is intended to be a concentrated source of information on hiring funfair side stalls, both traditional Victorian style and the modern fairground type.
I have just rolled in from an event at a Liverpool Casino, the second event we have attended there during December. The catering cart we supplied was well received and we are now in talks to supply some of our Victorian games units for upcoming events, and tomorrow (31st December) we are off to a nightclub event in London, another of our many visits to the capital. We have just installed sat navs in all of our vehicles so we should be able to find our way about a lot easier next season.
We would like to wish everyone we have worked with over the last year a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
One feature of this yuletide seems to be a move away from the traditional paper based cards to Ecards, mainly in the name of the environment. We were going to go down the same route until Arthur, bless his little cotton socks, told me he would like to film his music hall style dance routine and email that out to spread a little Christmas cheer. So just click on the link below and 'Take it away Arthur'
We have more or less come to the end of the fairground season. Some of our catering units are still attending corporate events but most of the children's attractions are undergoing a welcome rest. We have just begun the first phase of refurbishing a section of our childrens attractions. There are two main thrusts to this work, firstly all of the motors and control systems are being replaced with new state of the art fully automatic controllers. The reasons for this is to improve reliability, although we have never had a breakdown at any of our corporate events, the older rides have begun to need regular remedial work to keep some of the motors running. With the new systems everything will have a standard controller that will be interchangeable so only 1 type of spare parts will be needed. Additionally the systems will self time the ride and control the speed so having to adjust each ride to take into account the number of passengers will become a thing of the past, all the operator will need to do is press the green button to start the ride and everything else will be taken care of.
Secondly we are looking at redecorating some of the childrens rides. Although the paintwork is in excellent condition and probably wont require a repaint for another two or three years, we are looking at giving everything a more traditional feel, doing away with the modern cartoon characters and going back to scrollwork. In the main this is to enable the rides to be used by our Victorian Funfair offshoot, which is probably the fastest growing category of all our hire operations. After the success with the printed front panels for the Victorian side stalls, we are investigating the feasibility of using a similar technique on the rides.
After our successful presentation at the Durham Christmas festival, I was invited to the 5th birthday party of the events management company that organises the festival. It was a good night in the Epernay champagne bar in the walkergate section of Durham city. The company opened a Nebuchadnezzar bottle of champagne which holds some 15 litres of the beverage and took two people to pour it!
I got the chance to do a bit of networking whilst I was there and came away with a couple of possibilities for supplying attractions to events in the North East area.
Whenever anyone complains about problems we've encountered, I always insist that in our firm we do not have problems, we have challenges to overcome. Up to date we have always managed to find a solution, sometimes by a wing and a prayer, but everything usually turns out ok despite Arthurs repeated cries of "I am sick of challenges!".
It was gratifying therefore a couple of nights ago to find out that the team are eventually absorbing this we can do it attitude. I was at an event in Liverpool, we had kit in operation in Durham, and a team member was providing candy floss and popcorn to a TA event in Rotherham. Part way through the night in Rotherham, the organiser approached our candy floss barrow and explained that the chef hadn't turned up and could they help. The main course was burgers and hot dogs which is a staple fare of most fairground events so they had no problem in stepping into the vacant chefs position. They managed to pretty much get everything under control and the food cooking before the replacement cook turned up to take over.
The Yorkshire events network we are involved with is progressing nicely. We have been invited to form part of the core team, which will give us access to training facilities and a business adviser to assist with pushing the company forwards. I have already attended a couple of networking events and made some valuable contacts, as well as a couple of new friends.
Sometimes I think the system is designed to weed the weaker members of society out by grinding them down until they become suicidal. About 6 months ago I applied for a digital tachograph. I sent my existing licence as proof of identity only to have it returned with a note stating that old paper licences are no longer accepted, I have to have a new digital licence instead. So I sent my licence off with my application for a new photo licence, only for the DVLA to lose it. So then I had to apply for a replacement licence, I couldn't send my old licence as ID as it is missing so I sent my passport, unfortunately between me sending the passport and it arriving it expired, so back came the application with a refusal to accept it. So next I tried my birth certificate, when I was born I was registered as Arthur Robert, when I was baptised Jason was added, there is a special box on a birth certificate that can have names added at baptism. Unfortunately I could only find my original certificate with Arthur Robert on, I wrote a letter explaining and told them that they had already seen my passport etc, but the letter came back with another refusal. So I obtained a replacement birth certificate, one with Jason added at the bottom and sent it off.
Guess what, it came back today with a note stating that it does not have Jason on it, it bloody well does! I have returned it yet again with a scanned copy enclosed and a ring around the name, along with an arrow pointing to the ring and 4 inch high letters stating please read here. It it comes back again I think I will buy a black market forged licence its got to be a damn site easier.
On a brighter note the new range of Victorian side stalls are progressing nicely and we already have a number of booking both for this month and spread throughout next year. An image below shows the current state of play on the prototype.
I mentioned earlier about the city centre event in Durham. A northern based showman has operated at the Christmas festival for a number of years. This year the council decided to push the boat out and make the event a bit more spectacular. The events management company they employed for this task is one that we have an existing relationship with. Run by two sisters the company has employed us for corporate events in the past, and also for various festivals.
Not wanting to cause conflict with an existing operator, we agreed to provide attractions in Millennium Place (a stunning new part of the city centre housing a number of restaurants and bars) and the Gates shopping centre. In Millennium Place we provided a big wheel, helter skelter and a selection of side stalls and catering barrows, whilst in the gates we provided popcorn and candy floss. With the street furniture dotted around the main venue I was expecting a little bit of messing to get everything set, but in the event we pulled straight onto position and set up without much ado. Putting the catering barrows together the next morning provided some light relief when Arthur managed to pop the lenses out of his glasses, and an entertaining five minutes ensued with Arthur screaming at everyone to stand still whilst he tried to find the lenses, a process not helped by the fact that he couldn't see without them, and I was doubled over in hysterics laughing.
The Saturday of the event was excellent, with a steady stream of business all day, unfortunately Sunday saw a change in the weather with it raining incessantly right up until it was time to dismantle everything. At least we didn't get wet taking everything down. The clients seemed happy with the presentation (I have been invited to the companies birthday celebrations next week), and I think this is one event that we will be able to build on in the future.
About 6 weeks ago our planning calander was a bit bare on 2 weekends in November, so thinking laterally I decided to book some attractions into a couple of Victorian themed markets. At the time it seemed a good idea, however by the time November came around we had filled both weekends with corporate bookings, so the markets not only imposed an extra workload, they were bloody cold and miserable on the days I had to be there, so I think now I have got markets out of my system.
The range of Victorian market stalls are coming along nicely, we are in the process of adding lights to them and pictured below is the work in progress on the design for the front panels. Although I have put the design together, its via a bit of digital trickery, not because I am in any way artistic.
We have a couple of promising new developments on the corporate front, one is a series of jobs for a large casino chain, the other is a joint agreement with another operator to place attractions at a number of new ventures next season, details will be added here as the events are firmed up.
Arthur has recently jumped out of an aeroplane. At the time he was strapped to an instructor and this was part of his 40th birthday present, which is quite strange seeing as Arthur is generally terrified of heights. I think it is due to him being a P.O.R.G (person of restricted growth). Usually he is closer to the ground than the rest of us, so any increase in height is correspondingly greater for him.
Anyway I knew he was travelling down to Lincoln for the jump last Wednesday, and around 11 o'clock I received a text message telling me he had done it. I rang him back to inquire as to his health. "Fine mate", he replied, "Not a scratch on me!", which just goes to show what a selfish little git he really is. For weeks I had been extolling the possibilities of publicity for the company if he managed to splat his self on landing, after finding I couldn't convince him to do that I at least thought he would have come up with a few broken bones for me, but no, not even a bloody nosebleed (pardon the pun). So now we have the opportunity to tell people about him jumping out of a plane and landing safely, all the publicity value of someone drinking a cup of coffee without incident. I should have arranged to have the instructor throw him out without a parachute. I will post a video of the jump here as soon as Arthur sends it to me.
Anyway back at HQ where some of us have to work rather than jaunting about the skies, we are hard at work putting the logistics together for the upcoming Durham festival on 1st and 2nd December. The festival has been running for a number of years, but this year there is a concerted effort being made to expand it and turn it into a major festival. We have been asked to supply a number of catering solutions along with Victorian style sidestalls and a ferris wheel. The event organisers are expecting around 40,000 people to attend the event on the Saturday. A local council news release is here.
Our various websites contribute a steady stream of work, except for helterskelterhire.com. This has consistantly lagged behind the others, so much so that I considered cutting the website from our portfolio and letting our general funfairgames site handle its enquiries. Now I'm glad I didn't, over the past three weeks the site has generated more bookings for 2008 than all the other sites combined. So much so that our Helter Skelter is likely to be our most popular attraction next season.
This week is another hectic one, we have just returned from an event in Gloucester, undertaken for a consortium of property developers, to help promote a new giant housing development. On Wednesday we are sending attractions up into Scotland for an event on behalf of the largest speculative property developers in the U.K, at the same time operating one of our range of Victorian style catering carts at Wakefields 4 day Victorian market.
At the Gloucester event we trialled our new range of compact Victorian style side stalls. These are intended to be used for corporate events, their small footprint making them ideal for indoor events such as staff parties and promotions, where our existing range of full sized fairground stalls would be just too big. The picture below is a shot of a couple of them in use, they aren't complete, the decoration such as lighting and artwork has still to be added, but the general shape is there. We have completed the intial units of our first batch of 20 stalls. If they are as succesful as we expect, this number should double over next season.
We've just rolled in from another trip down south. I think we could do with moving the office down South, it seems that we spend more time there than anywhere else. This event was for the HQ of the Royal Automobile Club. The venue was absolutely stunning, the site dates back to the 12th century, (obviously not by the present owners), with the RAC being in occupation since 1913. The fountain outside the front entrance, leisure club and golf course combine to make it a really impressive site, I wonder if the AA have anything similar.
We are at events in our own neck of the woods for a couple of weeks,then its a trip up to Scotland, followed closely by another couple of events in the London area.
We have just joined an events networking group in conjunction with Leeds Metropolitan University. I spent a pleasant day at my first meeting on Wednesday. Amongst the other business owners I met were Emily who runs Shine Promotions Model Agency and Kevin the owner of Mint Photography. I have worked with Kevin before when we were both commissioned for an event to celebrate the opening of a new Lloyds TSB branch in Leeds. After the breakfast networking meeting, we then took part in a workshop on promoting your business using social media and communications. One thing that became apparant during the workshop was that I am already doing most of what I should be to promote JARM Amusements via the web, in some areas I was apparently in front of many businesses, so all that time spent tinkering with websites and various promotions seems to be paying off.
November is now almost fully booked, it looks like it is going to be one of our busiest months. December is starting to fill up so hopefully it will just be the normal January-February lull we experience.
For next season we have commissioned a number of new Catering carts and a salection of Victorian style sidestalls. These will be used with our Victorian style funfairs, and also for corporate entertainment jobs, where there more compact dimensions will make them easier to operate in Hotel rooms etc, compared with our fullsized fairground stalls.
From 26 October 2007, our catering operation will begin to change over to stocking only (where possible) Fairtrade products. It is only a small gesture, but one where even individuals can help make a difference to the sustainability of third world development. We will be the first Northern based fairground operator to take this step. Our candy floss barrows are already stocking only fairtrade sugar, our coffee barrows have switched to fairtrade beans, and will be stocking only fairtrade sugar after their current supplies are exhausted. In any future purchasing decisions, preferance will be given to Fairtrade alternatives, if they are available.
Additionally we will be stocking all of our carts with information leaflets and literature about the Fairtrade movement, and when running larger events, preference will be given to other operators who stock Fairtrade goods.
After 2008 we will only allow Fairtrade friendly operators to attend our events.
I am writing this post due to moaning from by business partner Arthur. He suffers from little dog syndrome (for those of you who are unfamilier with this medical condition, take notice of any little dog, Jack Russell size, they always make a beeline for the biggest dog they can find and pick a fight with it to prove they aren't afraid, some little people suffer from the same thing, I keep telling Arthur it doesn't matter that he is only little, he is just as good as a normal person!), and constantly complains that I never list any of my misadventures, that isn't strictly true, if you click here or here amongst others, you will see that I don't mind sharing my tales of woe.
After writing this I will be retiring back to the sofa with a cold towel across my eyes. What has happened is that I have been involved with building some new Victorian catering barrows. In the past I have paid someone else to formica the counters, this time I decided to do the job myself. Where possible I like to be able to do anything as it means I can repair things at short notice or prevent someone holding me to ransom over an important job. Anyway the formicering went fine, until the next day when I discovered that I am severely allergic to the glue I was using. My eyelids are a deep shade of red and look like I suffer from some kind of goggle eyed syndrome. My lips are cracked and bleeding and I itch in various delicate places. Not a dull irritating kind of itch, more the wanting to rip the skin from my flesh kind of itch.
The one crumb of comfort I have is that in a few days (hopefully) I will be back to normal, whereas Arthur will still be 4feet 3 inches tall.
They say variety is the spice of life. Well over the last week, we have attended a bat mitsvah in Manchester, a Sikh wedding in Birmingham and the Metro Centre's 21st birthday celebrations in Newcastle Gateshead (as it now likes to be known). The bat mitzvah (same as the more commonly known bar mitzvah only for girls) was something impressive. A fantastic marquee, quality catering and a band performing as the village people made it a really good night.
The Metro Centre event was one of the few occasions when we charged the public, (rather than being paid to attend). The event was quite successful, although it suffered from the same problem many firework type events do, it was too short. There was a good sized crowd, and we had just started to get really busy when the fireworks were let off and the crowds quickly dispersed. Overall it was a satisfactory night, and we were working with the Metro Centre, another prestigious corporate client so it was worthwhile attending.
I've just rolled in from Nottingham Goose fair, probably my least favourite event of the season. Everything about the place, the high rent, long hours and general hassle conspires to make it an event that I am glad to see the back of each October.
As we head towards November, things should be winding down. There are a couple of major fairs left, then a few bonfires and that's usually it. This time round however November is pretty much booked up. A major corporate event in the Gloucester area is followed by half a dozen smaller private hire events. We have a couple of city centre Victorian markets that we are attending with our old fashioned barrows and by then we are almost into December. That month sees us kick off with quite a large City Centre affair in the North of England, details will be posted in our coming events soon.
As I write this I am in the middle of preparing another massive amount of paperwork, this time for the forthcoming Metro Centre's 21st birthday party firework display. I can recall the Metro Centre opening, but I didn't think it was 21 years ago!
We are just in the process of adding another specialist site to our Cateing Crazy portfolio. coffee-crazy.co.uk is live. albeit still in an unfinished state. Hopefully the next week or two should see it fully operational.
As I write this I'm just getting ready to take a helter skelter to Nottingham for the cities famous Goose Fair, probably one of my least favourite events. The operating expenses there have grown to such an extent that it takes up untill about tea time Saturday before we actually start to earn anything for ourselves. If it rains we come away with a sizable loss.
Its been a hectic week, we were in the City of London on tuesday at the Cafe de Paris nightclub for a student event, back to an hotel next door to Gatwick airport on the Saturday for a wedding event and then up in the North East on Sunday for a corporate family funday. Everything ran smoothly so there are no comical escapades to report on at this time.
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.
We have just completed the first in a new line of catering units. These are designed to look like our existing Victorian Style candy floss carts, but they have 2 unique differences. Firstly they can be completely disassembled and pack into the back of a hatchback car. This increases the viable range that we can supply carts to and reduces the operating costs. Secondly the carts are designed to act like a Swiss army knife. The top counter and back panel are interchangeable with a range of systems we have constructed. This means that a single cart can be supplied as a candy floss cart, german sausage bar, ice cream unit, popcorn, French crepes or a coffee unit, with other options to be added in the near future.
This enables us to supply a fully matched catering option for corporate use, weddings etc. For further details visit candyflosscrazy.com.
My 8 year old dughter has just decided to write a blog charting her growing up on the fairground, so if anyone is interested it can be found at A Fair Kind Of Life.. At the minute its just a basic template, but as soon as I get time I will help her add some bells and whistles.
As I explained in a previous post, a large chunk of our work is for Victorian style attractions. To help capitalize on this we have just uploaded our newest website, Victorian Funfair Hire. This will be developed and expanded to concentrate on a rather large niche market that we hope to grow over the next couple of years.
We have attended for the last 3 years, an event in Rotherham called Aston Children's Carnival. Whilst we were there last year, one of the parish councillors introduced himself and told me that he ran a community group. He inquired about the possibility of hiring a couple of children's rides for the local community groups at two venues in the area. As we rely on the support of the parish council I sorted him a really good price out.
One of these events took place this morning. The first lady up with her children remarked "Is this it, only two rides, pathetic, there should be more". Now the parish council were paying us to attend. The cost of the rides at the point of service (to the children) was nothing, zip, zilch, free gratis and complimentary. Yet despite the fact that they were paying nothing, the first thing this woman did was complain. Sometimes I think that the cynics in this world see things more clearly than the rest of us.
I've had a fun time just lately with our computer systems. The main server in our network went down, and according to the repair shop I dropped it off at, it wasn't worth repairing. I jumped in the car and went straight round to PC World, to buy the fastest, highest spec Quad Core Processor machine they stocked (supplied with Vista, the new Microsoft operating system). After Setting it up, it seemed to run light years quicker than the existing Windows XP system, the new Vista interface seemed much smoother and more powerful than the old one, and I was well pleased. Right upto the point where I discovered that a lot of the programs I use for website development and planning just don't work with the new system.
This has led to a week of having to upgrade programs to newer versions, and wrestle with installing a new networking system to enable filesharing between computers. The new web development system, doesn't seem to like our existing websites, so I think the replacement schedule for them will have to be brought forward to this winter.
On a different tack, does anyone actually read this blog?
We have found over the course of the summer, that although large amounts of money are being invested in the latest equipment for use on the fairgrounds, a great many corporate clients prefer what we would term 'old fashioned' attractions. Given the choice of the fastest, latest white knuckle thriller, or a traditional helter skelter, we are surprised to find that many people book the latter.
To meet this need we are rebranding some of our attractions in traditional decor. Items such as the flying chairs that are decorated with childrens cartoons, lend themselves to being repainted in the traditional scrollwork of the Victorian era.
One such event was the recent official opening of Ropner Park in Stockton. After a multi million pound refurbishment program the park has been turned into one of the most stunning examples of its type in the North or England, if not the U.K. We supplied a small childrens traditional funfair consisting of a helter skelter, mini carousel, swing boats and candy floss cart.
Our One True Saxon project is progressing nicely, and we have a number of other corporate sponsorship/marketing campaigns under negotiation. We have just added a small fleet of hot dog trikes to our portfolio of attractions suitable for corporate branding. The trikes, pictured below, can be decorated with a companies logo or brand identity, and then used to dispense anything from Burgers to cold drinks, or indeed leaflets or free product samples.
The bikes are available for one off events or for longer term campaigns and have large side panels ideal for carrying graphic displays to advertise a product or company.
This has been a hectic week, we started on Sunday at Crayke near York, tuesday saw us in Leeds for the HSBC event and simultaneously in Manchester, Thursday at Lincoln and Sunday at the National Coal Mining Museum for England and the Lovebox festival for the One True Saxon promotion. At the HSBC event Arthur spent most of the time asleep i the van, although to be fair to him, he had to get up at 5 am, and the shock of discovering there is more than one 5 o'clock each day affected him badly.
The weather that we are currently enduring is having a devastating effect on the funfair industry as a whole. Some operators haven't managed to actually attend a fair for over a month, if this carries on a large part of the industry is going to find it hard to make it through the summer. In contrast we are having the best year we have ever experienced. We have altered our operation around entirely so that over 90% of our workload is now corporate events, where we are paid to attend. This means that when the heavens open up as they seem to do every day, we are insulated from the worst of the effects.
After our misadventures in the mud at Crayke, I repaired the winch and re routed the control wire well away from the winch rope. The event we attended on Thursday in Lincoln was at a primary school for children with behavioural problems. The teacher we were dealing with told me not to worry as they had quite a high staff/pupil ration and plenty of teachers would be on hand to deal with the kids. To be truthful, I was more worried by the fact that we had to cross 3 football fields to reach the school entrance, and there weren't any natural anchor points to use the winch for self recovery.
The event kicked off at 1pm and was due to continue until 3. The kids were absolutely fine and everyone seemed to have a good time, until at 2pm the heavens once again opened up and we suffered an hours torrential downpour. All I could think about was the fact that the vehicle we had there was due to be in London the next day for a 2 day music festival (part of our One True Saxon promotion), and the helter skelter was due to be erected at the National Coal Mining museum, one of the corporate clients that we have built a long term relationship up with. As it turned out I needn't have worried. We set off through the gate at speed and the vehicle/helter skelter made it safely to the tarmac surface of the access road.
With the unbelievable amount of rain we have been experiencing, many of the venues we attend have been turned into mud baths. More than once we have had to enlist the assistance of large 4 wheel drive tractors to recover kit from quagmires that we have found ourselves in. We have just attended Crayke gala with our helter skelter and Victorian swing boats. The ground felt quite firm during the site inspection, but as soon as we pulled onto the cricket pitch we sunk. I wasn't too worried as we had just acquired a demountable winch for exactly this sort of situation. Fitting the winch to the front of our smaller Foden transport unit we discovered a flaw in our planning, we didn't have enough wire rope to reach the anchor point and double back to the winch with a snatch block (A pulley system used to double the power of the winch). I didn't think the winch would pull us uphill using only a single line pull, but we had no choice but to try.
Routing the control lead into the cab to allow me to drive and winch I pushed the button. To my surprise we began to move slowly forward up the hill. I was well impressed, right up until the point where the control cable caught the winch line and was dragged into the drum of the winch, being instantly crushed, causing an electrical short which promptly burnt the control solenoids out in a cloud of smoke! We ended up having to bring in a large 4 wheel drive tractor and be towed out. I now have the job of putting the winch to rights ready for a visit to Lincoln on Thursday where we may well need it again.
All night raves are something I never seemed to find the time to attend. Well I have just reached home from my first one. The event was the Wild In The Country festival at Knebsworth House just off junction 7 of the A1. We had been hired by a clothing company called One True Saxon, to run a promotion using one of our games units. The festival goers were allowed a free game on our shooting gallery, after which they recieved branded prizes depending on how well they had shot. The event was spoiled a bit by the heavy rain which turned it into a mud bath, although not one on the same scale as Newcastle Hoppings which we had to travel to straight from Knebworth.
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.
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
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?
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.
its been an interesting week for me. Usually we attend 2 major funfairs over the Whitsuntide holiday, Richmond and Harrogate, both in North Yorkshire. This year, due to a number of corporate bookings we decided to kick Harrogate into touch and concentrate on paid work.
The first of these was a private party at a stunning house in Cleckheaton. Unfortunately when I got there the courtyard, at the top of a steep hill, was too small to manouvre the ride into position. After struggling for about 20 minutes, I decided to uncouple and try and manhandle it where it needed to go. After struggling for another 20 minutes, a bouncy castle operator decided to help me. We struggled together but still made no progress. Eventually we decided to tie a rope from his van to the towbar on the front of the ride, and drag it around. We moved it slowly but steadily closer to where it needed to be. Suddenly I could see he was pulling the ride, over the wooden chocks I had placed in front of the wheels. I shouted WHOA, (which where I come from means stop, or more precisely stop bloody quickly). Unfortunately he came from somewhere different and put his foot down. The ride jumped the chocks and set off down the hill. I watched with my heart in my mouth, already calculating how much the recovery bill was going to be. Fortunately (for me) the ride was stopped when it ran into the back of the bouncy castle mans van. The damage was merely scuffing of his paint, which surprised me. He decided against helping me further and left me with the ride half way down the drive, and the lorry stuck behind it.
I ended up having to ring Renny, who fortunately was making another of our visits to the Ponderosa centre. He arrived and we once again had everything under control.
The whole incident reminded me of a time about 14 years ago, when I was helping another operator manhandle a large amusement arcade at the Pontefract Status fair. With a number of people pushing, the attraction set off down the fairground gathering speed. A number of wooden blocks were thrown in front of the wheels but it just rode over them. All the while, I was holding the towbar, which as we was pushing the device backwards, I was at what was effectively the rear. For some reason I dug my heels in, I weighed about 12 stone at the time and the arcade was maybe 15 tonnes so you do the maths. I resembled a Warner Bros. cartoon character leaving 2 deep trenches with my feet.
The arcade as I remember was heading straight towards Stewert Robinsons waltzer. Richard, a long time employee of Stewerts, was busy dismantling the waltzer. He looked up, saw the arcade coming and then looked back down to concentrate on his job. Seconds later, his brain had relayed the message from his eyes and he looked back up with his eyes bulging, another good candidate for a Loony Toons cartoon. Diving out of the way just in time, the arcade crashed into the Waltzer and came to a rest.
Book our helter skelter now for any event in October/November/December in the Yorkshire or North East and we will supply it for the special price of £599. This includes transport, staff, power generator, risk assessments, public liability insurance and safety certification.
On the way home from the Sheffield Bright marketing half marathon (we supply a few children's attractions to the event, I don't actually compete in it), I was just nearing our Yorkshire base, when out of nowhere, at not much above tree level, a Lancaster bomber flanked in formation by a Spitfire and a Hurricane swept across the road. I've seen modern Tornado and Harrier fighters, and even Vulcan bombers just before they were retired, but none of them were as awe inspiring as this trio. Obviously they were the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, for the benefit of some of the younger readers that have received a modern politically correct education, the Battle Of Britain was a part of World War 2, an attempt by the Germans under the leadership of a certain Mr Hitler, to gain control of Europe (before the concept of the EU was thought of). By 1940 Germany had conquered most of Europe and Britain stood alone.
Before the invasion of Britain could commence, the Germans needed to gain air superiority so they launched an all out air attack on the UK. Between July and October of 1940 the vastly outnumbered british fighter pilots repeatedly repulsed the German attack, leading eventually to invasion plans being shelved, and Winston Churchills famous words;
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few"
We realise that no matter how much information you place on a website, someone always needs to know something you haven't thought of. We have a frequently asked questions page on our main website funfairgames.net which can be useful.
To further help answer any enquiries, we have just added a Q&A panel to this weblog. If you look to the top right hand corner of the sidebar, you will see a box labelled Q&A. When the box states "I Am Online" you just click on the ask a question link and ask us what you need to know.
We will try to answer your questions as quickly as possible.
We have always ensured our paperwork is up to date and comprehensive enough to cover everything the Health and Safety Executive require. At even a small event we supply a document folder about 40 pages thick with our insurances and risk assessments etc. Just lately we have been asked for formal method statements, something no one has really required before, so I am know sat in front of a desktop systems working on method statements, not only for our own attractions, but also for anything that is likely to attend an event with us. That 40 page document will now be around 90 pages, no wonder the rain forest are disappearing at an alarming rate. A lot of our clients will accept these files in PDF format so that does cut down the paper output a little, but even so I have gone through just short of 3000 sheets of A4 in the last 3 weeks!
On the corporate front our latest special offer with the helter skelter seems to have paid off, with half a dozen bookings in the last 4 days so that will keep that attraction nicely busy.
Our Victorian Candy Floss Carts seem to be gaining in popularity as well, with quite a few bookings for shopping centres and other corporate clients, with the massive increase in corporate work we will be attending less than a dozen traditional fairgrounds this season.
We take our health and safety responsibilities very seriously, each and every piece of funfair equipment has to undergo a rigorous independent engineers inspection covering electrical and mechanical safety, as a result the fairground industry has the best safety record of any passenger carrying industry in the UK.
We always supply copies of the inspection certificates we receive along with copies of our risk assessments and public liability insurance to any event we attend. We have just attended a college ball in Oxford where the on site power distribution people refused point blank to accept our test certificates. They insisted on PAT (portable appliance testing certificates) which is not something the Health and Safety executive recommend for the funfair industry. Instead we are required to undergo an ADIPS inspection (Amusement Devices Inspection Procedures Scheme) which is generally far more stringent than a PAT test. So we are now in the situation where anything we are likely to attend a college event with is going to have to be PAT tested as well as ADIPS tested. Surely with all this standardisation the EU seems to be foisting on us they could do something useful like offer us a standardised testing scheme.
Anyway that gripe aside the corporate side of things is still steaming ahead, we've just looked at our bookings for this year and to be truthful, I don't think we will be attending many traditional funfairs, we don't really have the time. The amount of work coming in from all of our websites is phenomenal, with the exception of the helterskelterhire.com site. That has led to a steady but unspectacular stream of work. This will be remedied over the next few weeks as we put more time and effort into winning corporate work with that particular attraction.
We attended the Ponderosa rare breeds animal farms 10th anniversary party on Sunday. The day was building up nicely until the heavens opened up and a torrential downpour ensued, leaving us soaked to the skin as we dismantled and removed everything. Our policy of building long term relationships seems to be working as we have attended the Ponderosa a number of times over the last 12 months, as situation we have repeated at Ripon where we have just been offered another couple of events for this summer.
We are still receiving an avalanche of orders each day. We now have approximately 3 times the number of events booked for this year, as we had booked in the whole of 2006.
Our corporate activities have taken a giant stride forward, with most of this increase in workload coming from entertainment companies. We are currently supplying an attraction for a major companies ad campaign, pictures will be posted here after the event. Another new possibility is that of corporate branding. We are in talks with a major company who have contacted us to ask if they can decorate one of our shooting galleries in their corporate logo to attend a number of festivals around the country. This is the type of work we are concentrating on this season, so hopefully this could become a regular occurrence.
A major operator in the South has announced his intention to become the countries first "Carbon Neutral Funfair Operator." I don't think the timetable he has set out for this is achievable, but the aims are laudable, and we will be watching with interest the methods he uses to try and reach this target. If we can use the same systems to achieve a reasonable reduction in carbon output then we will follow suit and announce a carbon reduction plan of our own.
We have a very good deal with Orange for all of our phone services. However this month, my phone alone has landed me with a bill of nearly £300 pounds. In fairness I am dealing with around 15 enquiries a day, and have been doing so for the last couple of months, so I suppose it is not too bad really.
We have just attended an event in Blackpool for a company called Modus. They operate a number of shopping centres and asked us to supply a candy floss cart for a St George's day event at the Hounds Hill centre in Blackpool. It was saddening the number of people who came up for their free candy floss and didn't know it was St Georges Day. Many of the younger (under about 40 year old) visitors didn't appear to know who St George was!
We are just putting the finishing touches to a package for a film production company, filmaing a television ad. It started out as a relatively easy job, logistically, until they switched venues from Newcastle Upon Tyne to Gloucester, necessitating a complete replan of our logistics, as both the helter skelter and ferris wheel we were planning on using were already in the North East, but thats life.
When the renewal of my personal car was due, I decided to switch from my existing insurer to Tesco car insurance as they saved me around £120. I completed the forms over the phone and was duly insured. A letter arrived about a month later asking for proof of my no claims discount, so I forwarded them the renewal notice from my old company with the NCD printed on it. This they promptly lost, so I sent them a copy, they rang me to say that they don't accept copies so I rang my old insurers who told me they would send me another original letter.
This arrived about 2 weeks later, I promptly sent it to Tesco's recorded delivery, they rang me 2 days later to tell me it had arrived too late and they had cancelled my policy. After a discussion with them they couldn't reinstate my policy, but gave me a new one starting from that day, about 3 months after the original. Everything went great for 3 weeks until a letter arrived asking me to prove my no claims discount. I pointed out the letter I had sent them already, "Can't use that sir !", "Why not", I asked, "That was for your old policy, we need another one for this policy", I explained the hassle I had already endured and he offered a compromise, "Ring me through your original insurers name and policy number an we will ring them".
A couple of days later after tracking this information down I did just that, "Whats the telephone number for them sir", "I don not know", I replied, "Surely you must have one for them", the company was Zurich a multinational insurance giant. "Sorry sir, we have no way of getting in touch with other insurance companies!". Great I thought, what the hell do they do if their clients car crashes into one insured by another company, ignore it.
I rang my business insurance brokers who contacted Zurich for me and obtained a letter clearly stating that when I took my original insurance out with Tesco, I had a full no claims discount. I dispatched this one recorded delivery and sat back in relief.
2 days later a letter arrived from Tesco telling me that they couldn't accept this letter as it only covered the period up to the original policy I took out with Tesco. They want one to cover the period between the original policy and the second policy they took out for me! So now it looks like I will need to ring Tesco up and ask for a letter covering this period, when it arrives I will need to then put into another envelope and send it back to Tesco's!
One thing I have learned is that I hope I never have an accident whilst covered by this bunch of clowns.
Radio Trent FM recently ran a competition called the runaway bride. A number of brides set off from Nottingham with £10 each and had to make it as far as possible in 24 Hours. The winning bride managed to reach Hong Kong!
For her troubles she won a complete wedding, rings, reception, catering and our helter skelter and swing boats to keep the kids occupied. In truth there weren't that many kids at the event and we had an easy afternoon. Mid way through one of the Trent Fm staff told me Twiggy was going to have a ride on the Helter Skelter. Now I always thought Twiggy was a model that had originally been a little thin, but had since filled out to become a really attractive woman. Imagine my disappointment when a little thin guy grabbed a mat and ran up the stairs. Seems Twiggy is the breakfast show presenter on Radio Trent!
The day after we were in Birmingham at a Sikh temple for a birthday party. There were about 300 guests to this event making it probably one of the biggest birthdays we have been to. The people were absolutely lovely. I only had to mention a cup of tea and within minutes one would be pressed into my hand. On enquiring if I was hungry they offered to send out for Pizza for me, but being at an Indian event I was happy to eat the food they had already prepared, which in all honesty was far nicer than your average pizza anyway.
The helter skelter we acquired at the beginning of last season was meant to be refurbished through the summer. Due to the unforeseen increase in corporate work we just didn't get the time, however we have taken advantage of a spare week we found to get back into the rebuild, pictured below is a photo of the new front, along with a copy of the ride the first time we erected it.
When all of the new risk assessment and fire regulations came into force, we complied with them virtually immediately. For the next few years I don't think a single person, local authority or fire officer bothered asking to look at them, and I complained more than once about the wasted effort we put into preparing them. Not any more, all of the events we have booked for this summer have seen us inundated with requests for risk assessments etc. At one event we sent folders containing assessments and insurance/test documents to the event organisers, the local council, the county council, fire chief, local police station and the event insurers!
In fact looking at the number of bookings we are now taking we have just invested in an industrial binding machine capable of binding upto 500 pages at a time, this will enable us to produce professional looking documents in the quantities we are going to be needing them in.
Last year brought a big upturn in the corporate side of our business. This was a trend which I didn't think could continue, but I was wrong! So far this year (Jan-Feb) we have had around a 20 fold increase in enquiry's for our services. Although I realise that every enquiry will not be translated into firm orders, we have had enough confirmed bookings to almost double the amount of corporate work from last season. If only a quarter of our enquiries become orders we will have tripled our workload.
In an attempt to keep ahead of the field, we are putting the procedures into place to gain ISO9001 accreditation. I did think at first it was a phenomenal amount of paperwork, but we are gradually getting used to the precedures, and I have found that the audit trail this standard produces is a help in dealing with this huge upturn in work.
Today, February 18th 2007 is one of my business partners 40th birthdays, so happy birthday Arthur.
I have just discovered that as a special treat Arthurs wife has paid for him to parachute from an aeroplane! For those of you who haven't met him, Arthur is vertically challenged, he applied for the part, during his schools production of Snow White, of one of the dwarves, but was told that he wasn't quite tall enough to look realistic. This is a guy who gets a nosebleed from the altitude if he has to travel upstairs on a double decker bus, and he is going to jump out of an aeroplane at somewhere over 6000 feet, this I have to see!
On a more serious note, I have just seen the governments proposals for the new litter gestapo. If I understand it correctly, some mindless yob is going to walk along the high street eating an ice cream, when he finishes it he will undoubtedly throw the paper on the floor, whereupon a few minutes later, the local SS litter inspector will wander along and promptly fine the law abiding shopkeeper for the litter in front of his shop, once again this government find it easier to target law abiding citizens than actually do anything about the endless stream of scumbags inhabiting our inner cities. This will probably turn into a nice little earner for Gorden Brown, and quite possibly some of the aforementioned yobs will find a lucrative little niche for themselves, "give us a tenner a week mate, or we throw the litter down outside your shop!"
The following short story is one that illustrates the creativity and inventiveness that the average showman can conjure up when confronted with adversity (or more likely possible loss of earnings). Its a story that one of my business partners, Renny, has been sending to newspapers for years without any of them ever taking the story up.
It seems that in times past (this usually refers to anytime before about 1969) Renny's father, and one of his uncles, were just leaving the site of a fairground to travel on to their next venue. As they drove through the gate of the site, a car ran into the side of the lorry they were travelling in, (for any of our american readers, a lorry is what you would call a truck). After checking everyone was ok and swapping details, they examined the damage to their vehicle. They discovered that due to the impact, they were not able to turn right, but the vehicle was still capable of making a left hand turn. After much debate, and the assistance of a road atlas, they managed to plan a route to the next fairground that did not require any right hand turns!
They actually made the trip safely, albeit a usual half hour run took something like 4 hours, but they proved that there is always a solution to every problem.
We currently have a couple of special offers available until the end of February. On our helter skelter site helterskelterhire you can hire a square helter skelter along with Victorian swing boats for £800, this is only available in the North East and Yorkshire areas, we can supply the offer to other areas but a fuel surcharge would be applicable. The event must be booked before the end of february but, can take place on any date.
The second offer is from our sister site candyflosscrazy, any bride booking a wedding package with the Victorian Candy Floss cart can have the candy floss supplied in tubs, custom printed with the bride and grooms details at no extra cost. Again, the package must be booked before the end of February, but the wedding can take place on any date.
At the moment I am in negotiations with a number of university and college events to supply rides. A couple of these are in Cambridge, so Friday I made the trip down to the city to look over the sites. I have never been to Cambridge before, but I will most certainly visit again, the City is absolutely stunning. The architecture of some of the buildings, both in the city centre and at the colleges is well worth a visit, and the sense of Grandeur and history is absolutely amazing.
Looking back over 2006 it was a real roller coaster ride (excuse the pun). As the traditional funfair business declined sharply, our corporate activities really took off. We visited some absolutely stunning places, and some real rough areas. One small community event we were attending was scheduled to finish at four pm. A few days before the event we received a phone call from the organisers, "Do you mind finishing at three", they asked "No problem", I replied, "But is there a reason?" "Yes, the police mobile CCTV camera van has to leave at three, and they advise you not to be there after they are gone", lovely!
We also met some varied characters, again some were absolutely lovely people, on the other hand at least two of those we dealt with are actively being sought by various police forces who would like them to help with their enquiries.
One thing we have found is that experience counts for a lot, the experienced events organisers know not only what is possible, but also what is viable, unfortunately some of those organising community events have little grasp of economics, people will organise a table top sale aimed at an audience of 200 people, and ask if we can attend with a roller coaster, four or five major rides and a dozen stalls? When you explain that for the expected crowd you may be able to bring a single children's ride, they are somewhat crestfallen.
We survived the year quite well, the only problem we encountered that we couldn't solve was the day we were booked to attend a James Bond themed day at a car dealership, on the way to Scunthorpe the vehicle, (an 8 wheeled Foden carrying a custom built shooting gallery) developed a problem with the cooling system and couldn't make it, normally we have a spare unit carrying a slightly smaller shooting gallery which could take its place, unfortunately that was booked into a private party at Worksop at roughly the same time so there was nothing we could do, the annoying thing is that our Foden vehicles have consistently been absolutely superb, the only other breakdown being a broken fan belt, and the vehicle limped home on that day under its own steam.
It seems that specialisation is the way to go. Our dodgemhire.net site has only been active a few days and already the dodgem enquiries are into double figures. It is also ranking at no 6 on google under searches for dodgem hire, which is quite good considering it only took a couple of days to get it there, and I managed to do it without mentioning Britney Spears naked, knickerless or any other pornographic combination.
Our new site carouselhire.net is now active, again its a work in progress, but hopefully it will be as successful as the previous site.
Continuing my series of how to win guides, I'll wrap the shooting gallery section up with a brief mention of cork guns. These fire a small cork plug usually trying to knock a target down. Cork guns are cheap and cheerful, designed purely for fun, not as accurate target shooting devices, to this end there isn't really much you can do but point the gun in the vague direction of the target and pray. The corks are lightweight and tend to rise, so aiming low should give you a marginally better chance.
The Grabber
Rather than try and explain the workings of this machine, I have found a very good you tube video from braniacs, so click on the play button below and watch this. The second video is a clip giving tips on various games.
Basketball
The armchair experts will tell you that the balls are too big to fit into the hoops, this is another urban myth. The hoops are smaller than a standard basketball hoop, but there is usually a large prize at stake, and at the distances involved the operator would be bankrupt in a couple of hours if he used regulation hoops. One method that is used is to pump the basketball up as hard as possible, this helps to bounce the ball of the back plate and miss the hoop. Feel the balls and try and pick a couple that are softer than the others, also the best method is to throw the balls high so that they drop into the basket, rather than trying to bounce them off the backplate and in.
When I put our first website together, it rapidly grew to encompass all of our operations. Eventually an offshoot site candyflosscrazy was designed to cater for weddings and private parties. This has worked exceptionally well since its inception, thus we have now just launched the first in a series of specialist sites, dedicated to providing individual items of funfair attractions.
Dodgemhire.net is still pretty basic at the moment, but over the coming weeks it will evolve into a fully featured standalone site specialising in nothing but the hire of dodgems, for college, corporate and private events.
The stately home at Thornbridge Hall is an absolutely outstanding venue for any event. After attending a successful summer Fayre their we were asked back with a smaller presentation for their Christmas event. Financially this one was a bit quieter than the summer event, but once again it was an enjoyable day out, nice people and stunning scenery.
Whilst chatting with Emma, one of the organisers, she mentioned that the Police had been to see her. evidently the event had brought an increase in traffic to the surrounding village, an elderly gentleman had to walk around a parked car and duly called the forces of the law to deal with it. Now the British have a long history of being explorers, inventors, warriors, diplomats, traders and so on. With miserable auld bleeders like this shuffling about this green and pleasant land our former history fades into the depths of time. What is it with people, they are unable to make allowances for any slight inconvenience no matter that many more people are deriving enjoyment from the day. The truly outstanding point however, is the fact that the Police actually sent 2 officers to investigate! Obviously on a Sunday there is not any muggings, burglaries, rapes, murders or other crimes to investigate, perhaps we should close Police stations down on Sundays and save the tax payer some money.
In fairness we come across this situation a lot, at one street fair we attend for some 4 days in the year, we stand all along the high street which is used for parking the rest of the time. Someone will drive up to their regular parking spot and suddenly stop dead, a look of sheer panic across their face that there is a ride occupying "their spot". After they calm their trembling limbs, they will drive around the block and back, only to once again suffer a bolt of panic, "the ride is still there!" I have seen people drive around like headless chickens four or five times, thinking that perhaps its a dream and when they drive up again the spot will have been magically vacated, meanwhile 50 yards away, the free multistorey car park remains totally empty.
At most fairs of this type, the council post notices the week before informing everyone that after a certain time the high street is out of bounds due to the fair arriving. At one North Yorkshire market town, we arrived with our attractions to find the entire high street empty, with the exception of a solitary car parked right where we were due to begin setting up. After waiting in vain for a couple of hours for the owner to arrive, we had a word with a local Police officer. He found out a home contact no for the car owner and rang it. A woman answered and the officer asked if she could give him a contact number for the car driver as he was parked awkwardly in this particular town. "No your mistaken", replied the woman, "my husband is in Peterborough on business", and wouldn't believe any evidence to the contrary.
The officer eventually had the car towed away for us and we discovered later that the gentleman in question had been having an affair with a local woman, and indeed should have been in Peterborough.
I'm going to pen a few articles concerning how to go about increasing your chances of winning on the popular funfair games, I also hope to dispel some of the myths surrounding the way games are operated.
First off lets deal with the situation you commonly see on many games. This is the one with a giant prize, around its neck hangs the label "Me free if you lose". Prizes of this size wholesale at around £10-£20 each, common sense would indicate that you are not going to give the game attendant £1-50 and be guaranteed that prize. What happens is that the game is designed in such a way that it is very difficult to lose, you win virtually every time, but when you win you are given a small prize. The fact is that the size of prizes is directly related to the difficulty of the game, shooting galleries require skill so tend to dispense quite large prizes, a hook a duck stall you merely have to catch a floating duck, so the prize must wholesale at less than the cost of the game.
Shooting Galleries
The barrel is bent, and the sights are off are the two most common complaints heard in relation to shooting games. A gun with a bent barrel does not fire off target, it simply jams and does not fire at all. As for sights being off, some operators probably do but the fact is there is no need to do this. The vast majority of people simply have no idea how to aim a gun correctly, those who do can easily adjust their aim to take into account the sights inaccuracy so its pointless adjusting it off target. The technique for this is called aiming off. Take your first shot and see where it hits, if it hits half an inch to the left of where you aimed, then simply aim all of you remaining shots, half an inch to the right, if it hits an inch below, aim an inch above and so on.
Correct Aiming Technique
Most fairground rifles have simple open or "iron sights", these require you to line 3 things up, the rear sight, the front sight and the target. Lets assume the target is a small dot, the picture below shows the image you should see if your sights are lined up correctly. This image, coupled with the aiming off technique should give you a good chance on games with the round targets, usually rings of increasingly smaller diameter, with the inner ring or bullseye being worth the most points.
Hearts
One of the most popular targets on the fairground is the 3 hearts. This consists of 3 hearts of increasingly smaller size, the object of the game is to land a shot inside each heart without touching the red line. The smallest heart is quite difficult, consequently the prizes tend to be large ones. The big mistake everyone makes is trying to aim dead centre on each heart, whilst this works on the first two, the smallest heart doesn't have room for a pellet to fit into this position. You need to aim into the upper corners of the heart which forms a naturally rounded shape. Also another tip is to always go for the biggest heart first, if the guns aim is slightly out, the larger heart gives you a chance to sort your aim out whilst still landing a shot inside, the smallest heart can only be done with a very accurately placed shot.
These articles will continue over the coming few weeks.
The following video clip shows a ride similar to that on the Janice clip, with a lady ending up in a similar position to the kid in the first video. It might not suit the P.C. brigade, but perhaps there should be a body mass restriction on some rides as well as one for height.
