A Day At The Fair

Unfortunately a funfair has popped up not far from us for the duration of half-term holidays. My kids can sniff out their dodgy hotdogs from miles away so there’s absolutely no avoiding going when they come to our local area.

Growing up in Australia it’s just not something you really do that often, but in England they have them all the time and pretty much every green space in London has a fair on it at some time or another during the year. I don’t get it but my kids think they’re awesome.

So this afternoon we went. After we’d made sure we had at least fifty thousand pounds cash on us to cover the token costs and made sure everyone was wearing mud proof shoes for the slush fest it usually is, we left the house with the kids who were bouncing around like pinballs with excitement.

On the bus on the way there we were entertained by a neurotic woman with a two year old boy who was throwing an almighty tantrum. I love it when that happens, it’s good for my parental self confidence. Anyway when his screeching reached glass shattering proportions, to quieten him down she took her hand and held it over his face like she was trying to smother him. When he (inevitably) screamed twice as loud when she removed her hand she yelled so the whole bus could hear “look what you’ve done, now the whole bus is staring at you”. Like a two year old gives a shit about that.

I left the bus feeling like Mother Theresa.

Moving on. Once we’d paid half of Rob’s annual salary to the ticket booth lady, Holly and I went straight to the scary ride section. We picked the ride we wanted and handed over our tokens to the Romanian guy missing a tooth and got in. We sat there for a while waiting for him to come around and lock the safety bar and when he did I noticed he was missing a finger too.

Now given the lengths I go to in order to keep my kids safe, I couldn’t help but think it weird that I let my eldest child and myself go on a ride that was assembled by a bunch of Romanian Gypsies out of the back of a trailer and operated by a man with a missing tooth AND a finger.

My other observation was that funfairs always bring out the colourful types of society.

You know the type – Chavs. (Or Bogans if you’re Australian). Whatever – every country has its own term for the type of person I’m talking about.

While I was in the queue to buy a drink there was this family next to me that looked like they’d fit right in on the Jeremy Kyle show with a baby in a pram who was about six months old and I am not shitting you, they were feeding it candy floss.

I really wanted to take a photo and tried to without them looking but I missed my opportunity because just as I was angling my iPhone discreetly, I saw a girl wearing a t-shirt that had ‘MUFF’ written in huge letters inside a giant mouth with its tongue hanging out.

Where do these people come from? Why do they like funfairs so much? Who the hell feeds their little baby candy floss? Imagine if your granny saw you wearing a t-shirt like the muff one? Does the Romanian gypsy miss his tooth or his finger more?

So many questions .. so few answers.

What do you think of the funfair? Like them or loathe them?