I must admit that I like gadgets. When I buy a phone, the last thing I look at is its ability to make phone calls. Sat nav, internet access etc, great.

The one area I don't apply this rule to is the equipment we operate. I've found over time that the more sophisticated something is, the more there is to go wrong, so I try to operate the K.I.S.S. methodology (keep it simple stupid!). Our prime movers, (heavy vehicles used to transport or tow attractions) tend to be Fodens. This is an English marque established over 100 years ago. Now the thing I like most is the fact that the most sophisticated piece of electronics on a Foden is the radio cassette player, this means that most problems you encounter can be sorted in house, or at the side of the road.

I was reminded of the wisdom of this approach recently. On the way back from Mablethorpe I called into a service station to refuel, and pulled alongside another showman's vehicle. As I climbed out of the cab I recognised a mate of mine called Patrick. On seeing me his eyes lit up and he exclaimed "Good, you know what you're doing with technology, I need help."

What it transpires happened is that his vehicle, a Swedish built Volvo, has probably the most sophisticated drivers seat I have ever seen. Around a dozen buttons on the side are connected to a number of motors and valves enabling you to adjust virtually any part of the seat. Pulling into the service station, Patrick decided his seat was inclined slightly too much, so he pushed the adjustment button. The electronics in the seat chose this moment to malfunction and promptly kept folding the seat forward, doubling Patrick up against the steering wheel. Luckily it ran out of adjustment just short of squashing him completely, otherwise he might well have went down in history as the first man killed by a self adjusting drivers seat!

By the time I had rolled up he had managed to extricate himself from the position and was trying to strip the seat down to move it into a position he could sit in. After the Stratford incident I try to make sure our vehicles have a comprehensive supply of tools available, so I was able to help him get the seat into some type of order.



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I've finally found a spare half hour to update our annual wall planner (our bookings are all computerised, but I like them replicated on the planner as it gives an instant overview). Totting up the corporate bookings I've realised that we have an almost equal number of events booked as last year, not equal to this point in time last year, but equal to the whole of last year! If the pattern of enquiries follow last year then February and March tend to be the months we receive the most bookings, so this is shaping up to be another big leap forwards for us. The most satisfying part of this is the fact that most of the bookings we already have are repeat clients. We are always on the look out for new business obviously, but its the repeat business that is giving us a really solid foundation to build upon.

The new sidestalls website is paying dividends with a number of bookings from it already, although in fairness we have spent a lot of time on S.E.O. for that particular site. The experience we have gained from promoting our other sites has really helped push this one up the rankings on Google really quickly. Hopefully by the end of February we should have our new pdf brochures designed and ready for uploading. It was something that we had intended to produce last year, but just couldn't seem to find the time to do it due to the amount of work coming in.

Fairground Side Stall Hire

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I try to interperse the serious postings in this blog with anecdotes illustrating the lighter side of life. Just of late, no one on the firm has done anything spectacularly wrong so I am a bit short of humerous subject matter. To rectify this I will relate two true stories, one from this summer and one from the distant past.

At Hartlepool carnival, a young local lad found himself trapped on top of the rocks on the seafront due to the tide turning quicker than he realised. A couple of showmen were alerted to this and went to effect a rescue. They threw a lifebelt (a circular inflated device attached to a rope, the idea being it keeps the victim afloat and you pull him into the shore), to the unfortunate lad, probably the correct thing to do under the circumstances. Unfortunately in the spirit of Larry, Moe and Curley, they didn't think to hold the other end of the rope and promptly threw this into the sea as well! This time the gods were in a benevolent mood as the very next wave brought the end of the rope back into their reach. After holding on this time they brought the lad close enough for one of them to rush into the sea and grab him. All in all a brave thing to do, even if it did look like a scene from the three stooges.

The second incident happened a long time ago. My old man and his friend Frank were working for a scrap metal merchent during the close season. They were helping him recover buses that were due to be scrapped. One day they were both in a bus without an engine, that was being towed back to the scrap yard. As they passed through the high street at Darlington, the tow rope snapped, leaving them to coast silently to a stop at the side of the road. Unfortunately they had stopped in a bus stop! Before they could gather their wits, the queue of people promptly boarded and sat down waiting for the conductor to collect their fares. Another moment of high farce ensured as they tried to convince people that they were not the scheduled bus service and that they couldn't take anyone anywhere!

On a business front, we are involved with this years Durham Christmas festival. We will be supplying a number of old fashioned sidestalls and catering barrows to the Millenium Square section of town, as well as positioning barrows in the entrance to one of the shopping centres and hopefully our helter skelter into the market square.




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In general, your average travelling showmen is pretty resourceful and generally multiskilled. Everything from an electronic engineer, through a qualified welder to an airbrush artists can be found withing the funfair community. In fact, virtually any requirement that a showman had, could be met within our industry. The money could be circulated and kept ringfenced in this business and would benefit us all. Sadly, many people would prefer to to spend their money outside of the showland fraternity, simply because they feel that by giving money to another showman they are somehow helping him up the ladder of success and they don't want that.

A number of years ago I was designing and selling lighting systems. At a large Northern funfair, (Newcastle Hoppings), there is a section of the site reserved for traders who are selling goods directly to the showmen. One of these traders specialised in electrical and lighting goods. He asked me if I had any lighting control units ready assembled that he could sell on his stand. I had two identical units, I gave him one to sell and kept the other for myself as someone I knew was coming to look at it. The gentleman in question duly arrived, he looked at the unit and we discussed the price which was £200. He told me he would think about it and let me know. He then left me and visited the aforementioned trader, where he immediately paid £350 for my other identical unit! The trader then came back to me and took my second unit to replace the one he had just sold. I was happy, I had my money, the trader had made a nice profit, and the showman in question was happy, he had given his money to someone outside of the business???

A distant cousin of mine has been decorating fairground rides and transport for a few years now. I recently had a quick look over his site and was pleasantly surprised, I hadn't realised just how good he was. Anyone wanting custom airbrushed artwork should look over DAZEBESPOKE. I intend to practice what I preach and am waiting for a price from him to redecorate some of our attractions in a traditional Victorian theme.

The Professional Approach To Corporate Funfairs

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The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are a necessary evil, without them the cowboys would really take the mick and cut corners wherever and whenever possible. A recent incident however made me realise just how frightened people are becoming of them. During the Newcastle Hoppings funfair, my daughter along with most other kids at the event attend an onsite school, specially set up to enable them to continue their education whilst the fair is in progress. The fair this year was extremely muddy, so my wife walked our daughter to school both in their wellingtons. On arriving at the school my wife told the teacher she had brought a clean pair of shoes so that our daughter didn't spread mud over the floor and "make it slippy". Unfortunately, the day before my wife had purchased a raincoat from an on site vendor selling surplus clothing. This raincoat had in small letters (about 1 inch tall), the emblem HSE embroidered on the front. Within a couple of hours my wife heard a rumour that the Health and Safety executive were threatening to close the school.

On returning to the school at lunch time, my wife was greeted by Albert Austin, the fairground manager. He anxiously explained that they had covered the floor of the schoolroom in cardboard to prevent any injuries from slips and would she like to inspect it to make sure it was safe! Explaining that she had nothing to do with the HSE saw everyone breath a sigh of relief. The point is, the panic induced by 3 tiny letters on a surplus raincoat was out of all proportion, the HSE has a serious problem if it is spreading fear and panic on this scale by the mere mention of its name. No wonder childrens playgrounds are being closed and carnivals cancelled due to health and safety fears.


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Continuing our series on beating the odds at the funfair, we now turn our attention to one of the all time classic funfair games, Hoopla.

Hoopla

This consists of a number of wooden or plastic cubes that have prizes placed on top of them. The idea is to throw a ring, again made of plastic or wood, not only over the prize, but also over the cube. To win, the ring must be flat on the table, not half over the cube at an angle. Before we go any further, lets get one thing clear, the rings DO fit over the blocks. Like any other business in the country, we are subject to trading standards rules, and they would shut us down in quick order if the rings were too small. The chances of throwing a circle over a square (with only a small clearence) is very low. To increase your chances of winning, spin the ring as you throw. Also, aim for a tall cyclindrical shaped prize such as a bottle. As the ring drops down the prize, if it is still spinning sufficiently it helps it to slip over the cube.



Pick Ticket or Lotto

This is another old favourite. Pick the tickets out, open them up, find a winning ticket and you receive any prize on the stall. Again, we hear people repeatedly claim that there are no winning tickets. In fact there are a large number of winning tickets on modern stalls. They are however sorted into order so that a winning ticket appears at regular intervals. You cannot really influence when and where a ticket is going to appear, however, if no one has won for a while, then the chances are that a ticket is due to come out. Similarly, when the stall first opens, and a crowd begin to gather, that is the time to buy a ticket, there are usually extra tickets in the pile at the beginning to get the game moving and the crowd buying, so you have a better chance at the start.

Roll A Ball

The third of our traditional games is roll the ball. This is where you have usually 6 ping pong balls to roll down the table. At the bottom are slots numbered 1 to 6. You roll the balls and add the scores up. A chart of numbers will tell you if you have won or not. This is a game of chance and there is nothing you can do to alter the outcome. The numbers are mathmatically worked out so that you either lose or win a small prize, but due to luck you do occasionally win the bigger prizes.


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Sugar, wether from a beet or a cane is a chemically identical product. There isn't much to differentiate different brands, its pretty much all the same colour, shape, taste etc. I have however discovered something strange. When producing candy floss, Silver Spoon Sugar produces about 5% more floss, than any other brand I have used. Additionally it produces a denser floss that doesn't seem to fly around so much making a mess. If anyone can throw some light on the reason I would be glad to hear it.



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The fairground is called various things in different parts of the country, in Yorkshire its "The Feast", in Newcastle "The Hoppings", and most other parts of the North East its called "The Shows", no doubt there are others.

At one time, before the advent of steam power and then electricity, the funfair consisted entirely of side shows and games. As rides began to come to the fore, an attempt was made by the Showmen's Guild to preserve the heritage of the sideshow, by inserting in its rule book an order that a certain percentage of all fairgrounds must be reserved for shows. During my lifetime I have seen giants, midgets, boxing, exotic dancers, mice, fleas and other various types of show. Nowadays they are virtually all gone, public attitudes have meant that things like exceptionally tall or short people are no longer to be viewed as entertainment, or perhaps its the fact that in the modern world they no longer hold any wonder for people who have seen pictures of man walking on the moon, bottoms of oceans and other wonders. Whatever the reason I think that they are an extinct part of the modern fairground and one which I can't ever see making a comeback.

A couple of images below show Shufflebottoms Wild West Show, an extremely popular form of entertainment on the fairgrounds of yesteryear. The second image is extremely interesting, showing Florence standing against a wall whilst the knife thrower outlines her body with his knives. If you look you will see she has her young son Garry standing between her legs, a modern Health and Safety inspector would have apoplexy at the sight, and if you know my "uncle Garry" this early exposure to danger probably explains a lot! Only Kidding.





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John Clifford Culine has just found out that he has received the MBE in the Queens upcoming honours list. He is the second northern based showman to receive this honour after Valerie Moody MBE was given the honour for her services to education.

John has been a long serving member of the Northern Section committee of the Showmens Guild, as well as serving in local government on the Spennymoor town council, including a stint as Mayor.

Congratulations Johnny!


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Funfair Rides And Games For Hire Or To Attend Your Event.

The following is an excerpt from the comments posted on the Edinburgh Evening News website;



I've lived in Marchmont for 25 years.
I use the Meadows pretty much everyday... going to work, going out, playing football, etc. and I've never had any bother, even when i'm staggering back from that amazing kebab shop on forrest road dribbling kebab sauce down my chin and onto my trainers whilst singing Bugsy Malone tunes to myself!!

However thats not say that the meadows are safe...A point was made in a previous post that mentions how attacks in the meadows seem to go up quite substantially whenever the "funfair" (more like Scumfair) is in town. I agree with that statement 100%!!

All that the fair does is attract teenage chav scum from nearby parts who do nothing but cause trouble and along with the fact the fair itself is run by a dubious bunch too!

Notice too how there always seems to be an increase in the number of car's getting broken ito and houses getting burgled!! Coinsidence?? I think not!

Police patrols are quite regular in the meadows and i appluad thier efforts to get rid of vagrents, teenage drinkers and other menaces to socitey!

But yes, more CAN be done! Such as infrared CCTV being added to the area! Especially at the east end.

Anyway...when the fair is in town you best make sure your windows and doors are locked!!!!


The story is about an area of Edinburgh called "The Meadows", where people are concerned at the rise in crime and attacks that are occurring there. In true British fashion the funfair must be to blame. The funfair visits the area about 2 weeks in every 52, but the apparent effect of this obviously lingers and forces the local people to commit crime for the next 50 weeks until they arrive again. In the 21st century we are still reverting back to the days when if someones cow dropped dead, an old woman in the village would be burnt at the stake for being a witch.

There are occasional dissenting voices on the website, but the overall impression seems to be that the funfair, (or scumfair as they refer to it) somehow lowers the tone of the area. Well I have news for them, some parts of the city are so rough, nothing short of a serial chicken molester would lower the tone.

Before there is a storm of protest about my comments, please reread the excerpt above, I am quite sure that the newspaper in question would not have allowed these comments to stand if instead of funfair they had made reference to asians or black men, so why the hell should it be O.K. to insult people going about a legitimate business, her majesty the Queen was quite happy to allow Hyde park to host a funfair and also the Mall, the fact that such an august publication as The Edinburgh News hosts this discussion gives it added legitimacy in the eyes of the readers.



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We've just rolled in from the small North Lincolnshire town of Crowle. This event is run by a friend of mine who asked me the other day to take a couple of attractions there for the switching on of the lights. We didn't expect a lot with the size of the town, but we were pleasantly surprised, there was a good turn out and it ended up a worthwhile exercise.

I found another interesting clip on YouTube. This one shows scenes from Newcastle Upon Tyne in the 1950's, the last 30 odd seconds shows the Newcastle Town Moor Fair, or Hoppings as they are known locally.




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Watch the news report on the following link: BBC News Report Lightwater Valley Accident

This is a dreadful case where the combined failings of a manufacturer, the operating company and a maintenance engineer led to the death of a young girl. The latest news report is that the three responsible parties had been hit with fines totalling about £150,000, which really isn't much for the death of a 20 year old girl.

Although this accident happened on a large theme park ride, there is no doubt that the tabloid press will once again run stories about the impending slaughter on funfairs up and down the country without once bothering to let the facts get in the way.

Obviously I have a vested interest in presenting the industry in a good light so I can in no way be said to be unbiased. For this reason I suggest you click on the following link, Funfair Safety Report from Health And Safety Executive.

This is a report from the H&SE, the government body responsible amongst other things for ensuring the safety of the public at funfairs in the U.K. The report contains a lot of statistical evidence which makes heavy reading, but 3 facts stood out for me which I will repeat here,

1 A pessimistic estimate (H&SE description) of the chances of being killed or seriously injured on a funfair ride is 1 in 83 million.

2 You are 12 times more likely to be killed or seriously injured on your way to the fair, than you are once you arrive there.

3 Statistically there is a greater chance of being struck by lightening than there is of being killed on a fairground ride!

However none of these statistics will prove to be of any comfort to the family of Gemma Savage, and our thoughts and condolences are with them.


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We hear daily how everything possible is being done to stamp out racism in this country. Well the following passage is from an online advert by a company called FIREBOX.



"Everyone loves candy floss. As far as naughty-but-nice nostalgic treats go, it's right up there with toffee apples and giant gobstoppers. The trouble is getting your gob round a woolly mass of scrumptious spun sugar usually involves visiting the local fair. And trudging through puddles of diesel amidst swarms of screaming teenagers is about as much fun as riding the chariots after a hot dog supper.

That's why you need to get spinning with our ingenious Candy Floss Maker. With this idiot-proof contraption you'll be making funfair-style candy floss in minutes. Simply add regular granulated sugar and switch it on. That's all there is to it. Well, almost.

As the machine heats up, the central head begins to spin, forcing liquid sugar through its tiny perforations. The instant the threads of sugar hit the air they cool and re-solidify, causing a web of sugary threads to develop in the dishwasher-friendly collection bowl. All you have to do is gather up the yummy wisps on your candy floss cone and get munching. The whole process is really rather wondrous.



The resultant candy floss tastes exactly the same as the woolly, melt in the mouth stuff you wolfed down as a kid. The only difference is you won't have to blag 50p off your mum in order to watch some old hag with a face like a spat out toffee, drop fag ash in the bowl. Speaking of additional ingredients, a dash of food colouring is all you need to make pink, blue or whatever colour you fancy floss."

I wonder what their adverts for pakistani or African products read like, or perhaps they feel the fairground community is the only one that it is acceptable to denigrate and abuse?




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A mainstay of the transport industry in this country for over 100 years, Foden trucks has finally ceased production. Taken over by Paccar in the 1980's the marque was deemed to have sales too low to support continuation of the brand. Foden vehicles are found in large numbers on any fairground in this country, due to their rugged build, rot proof construction and easy availability of double drive vehicles.

As we tend to use older vehicles for our purposes, we will have a steady supply of Fodens for the foreseeable future, but inevitably we will end up having to move to a foreign make.

Now imagine if the haulage industry in this country had taken a leaf out of our European partners books. In Germany the top selling vehicle is German, in Italy it's Italian, Holland its Dutch and so on throughout Europe. In Great Britain the top selling vehicle is from any country except Britain. Perhaps if our transport companies had bought British then many of the historic vehicle makes would still exist, Leyland, Foden, Scammell, Albion, A.E.C., Thorneycroft are all gone. We regularly hear complaints from the haulage industry about manufacturing companies using foreign hauliers to move their goods, well that's poetic justice. If the heavy goods vehicle manufacturing industry had been supported better by the hauliers, perhaps their would be more British goods to be transported, leading to a stronger haulage industry who would need to buy more British lorries leading to more goods being transported and so on. Instead we have just lost another little piece of our manufacturing base.








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After a fairly poor season overall, it was nice for the last major fair of the year in the North East to finish on a high note. Yarm, a small market town in cleveland hosts a 3 day street fair, originally it was the largest cheese fair in the North East? This year we had a distinct upturn in business compared to last season, one of the few fairs that have held their own this season. There is a nice report and short video clip on the Stockton Gazette website,
click here


Our corporate business is going from strength to strength. We have just received a commision from the largest speculative building group in the U.K. to provide some attractions for what they described as an 'extremely important' open day. We have also undertaken work for a major hotel chain and one of the North West's largest transport companies.







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For the last four or five years, a young lad called Denis has occasionally given me a hand on one of our attractions. Now Denis isn't the sharpest tool in the box, but over time he has become proficient in looking after our shooting gallery. Most of the time Denis works as a part time handyman or painter and decorator, he probably helped me less than a dozen days a year.

I haven't heard from Denis in about six months, so when I happened upon his cousin I enquired about his whereabouts. "Bristol Nick", came the blunt reply. Denis it seems is on remand awaiting trial for strangling his girlfriend! Now its an old cliche, but I didn't think Denis was capable of something like this, if he is guilty he should be put up against a wall and shot, but that will be determined by a jury of his peers. Reading the news reports on the internet, I happened upon one that stated Denis was an ex Fairground worker. WHY??????, he spent most of his time either unemployed or as an odd job man, so why isn't he described as an ex odd job man, or an ex painter and decorator?

A clue to one of the possible reasons behind this reared its head a few week later. A police inspector in Ripon, (a city where showmen including myself have excellent relations), penned an article reproduced in a number of local newspapers, where he slammed the fairground industry for "keeping alive the tradition of attracting yobs", and using up police resources. He went on to state that fairgrounds should be closed down and people allowed to go to Alton Towers and Florida!!! I wonder how much the Florida tourist board are paying him, and does he declare this second income. As a point of fact, the large fairs in the city, run by Stewart Robinson, have private security firms employed to keep order, and there is no evidence of police resources having to be used to run the event.

Perhaps if this inspector spent more of his time catching criminals, instead of trying to persecute innocent businesses, the street of Ripon would be a safer place to walk. Out of interest I wonder if the other 50 weeks of the year when there are no fairs in Ripon, does all of the teenage yobs disappear?

A piece of good news this week, the carousel that was reported destroyed in the arson attack, may be repairable, it seems that the BBC report was a little exaggerated, and although the ride is extensively damaged, the owners feel they can restore it to its former glory.

The furore over the last twelve months about illegal Gypsy encampments has had a negative effect on the funfair industry. A number of developments of winter sites for showmen have received knocks when local councils have refused them planning permission, possibly in part due to a knee jerk reaction to the Gypsy 'problem'.

Perhaps the most serious of these is at Gotherington near Cheltenham where 17 travelling showmen have been fighting for the last 4 years for permission to use the land they own for winter parking. They have good support in the local community, have encountered no problems over the last 4 years, yet the council will not entertain the idea of them having use of the land. On 28th of November the council are at the High Court trying to win a decision to have the showmen, both men and women, committed to prison. Hopefully due to the extended families found on the fairground the children should be spared the ordeal of being taken into care, but who knows?

I have heard people in the past claim that everyone including showmen and Gypsies should follow the same rules but, as an example, the site we occupy which was purchased and developed by my father in law took him almost 20 years to obtain planning permission, he had numerous sites in the area and fought and won 2 public enquiries before he finally was able to legally occupy the site. A short time later he applied for permission to build 2 houses on a piece of land he owned, this was granted within about 6 months with no hassle, so there is an apparent inequality and dare I say it racially motivated bias endemic within the planning system.

Harris Bros. 140 year old carousel has been destroyed in what was believed to be an arson attack at at a West Sussex fairground. Fire crews called to market square, Petworth on Friday 18th November and managed to prevent the blaze spreading to any other attractions. Attacks like this on original vintage equipment are tragic, they are part of the fairground heritage and once gone cannot be replaced.

Saturday September 24th saw a landmark in the annals of the Fairground Heritage Trust. The first turf of the site for the new Fairground Museum was cut before invited guests and visitors. Numerous fairground exhibits have formed part of the Dingles Steam Museums displays for a number of years, now hopefully they can be housed in their own purpose built building to ensure their long term survival as a part of our heritage and history.

Hello and welcome to Jason A.R. Moody Amusements weblog.

We intend to offer a commentary on the business of running a funfair operation in the North of England. Interspersed with this commentary will be a selection of money off vouchers for various events we are attending, along with other offers and information on funfairs in general.