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!






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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?


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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?

Victorian Sidestalls For Hire

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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.


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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.




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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.




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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.





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Here are the microformats for some of our upcoming events;




Gainsborough Riverside Festival:
June 7th-
8th,
at Gainsborough, Lincs





Future Perfect Festival:
June 8th

at the Racecourse, Durham City






Yarm Gala:
June 21st-
22nd,
at Yarm, Cleveland




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.


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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.


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"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.


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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;




Green City Festival:
May 25th-
26th,
at the Hillsborough Park Sheffield




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.


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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.


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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.


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"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.


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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!




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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.

More details can be found at National Compost Awareness Week.



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.


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In The Name Of The Father

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.


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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.




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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.


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"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.




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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.


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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!


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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.


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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.




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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.




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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.




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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.


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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.

Dodgems Available For Any Event, Nationwide

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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.



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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.

JARM Amusements, The Corporate Funfair Specialists

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'On Time Every Time'

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.

Espresso Coffee Carts, Nationwide Hire

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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).


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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.




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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.


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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.






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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!




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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.


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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.

Funfair Games For Hire, Indoor And Outdoor Events

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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.


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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'





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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.


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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.

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