Owner: Trials And Tribulations URL:http://www.funfairgames.net/weblog Join Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 05:15:10 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: The trials and tribulations of running a fairground company in the 21st century Site statistics:Click here
My Hometown 2008-03-05 18:34:00 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
Interesting Week 2008-02-28 10:41:00 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
K.I.S.S. 2008-02-24 16:39:00 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 thi
Gremlins and Biodegradability 2008-02-22 17:43:00 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
Environmentally Friendly Funfair Update 1 2008-02-18 16:53:00 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 Read more:Environmentally
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Faith In Human Nature 2008-02-14 17:21:00 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, ask Read more:Faith
Environmental Policy 2008-02-11 15:59:00 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 b Read more:Policy
Happy 100th 2008-02-10 17:16:00 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 cu Read more:Happy
On Time, Every Time 2008-02-08 14:20:00 '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,
Rolling Stone 2008-02-04 16:54:00 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 Read more:Rolling
, Stone
, Rolling Stone
Slow Time 2008-01-27 16:41:00 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 en
Beginnings 2008-01-21 19:18:00 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
Looking Good 2008-01-17 16:51:00 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
Ebay to the rescue 2008-01-13 15:56:00 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,
Down South 2008-01-09 05:59:00 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 South
ern 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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British Gas and Customer Service 2008-01-05 15:44:00 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 esca Read more:Customer
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, British Gas
Off to a flyer 2008-01-01 12:00:00 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 cylin
Side Stalls For Hire 2007-12-30 13:02:00 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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Merry Christmas 2007-12-20 03:56:00 We would like to wish everyone we have worked with over the last year a very MerryChristmas
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'
Arthurs Little Dance Routine
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Read more:Merry Christmas
something old something new 2007-12-16 21:02:00 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. Read more:something
Tact and Diplomacy 2008-03-13 15:37:00 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 t
Carbon Offsetting 2008-03-15 17:22:00 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 Read more:Offsetting
, Carbon
Off To The Tower 2008-03-23 14:55:00 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 an
Environmental Friendly Funfair Update 2 2008-03-25 19:05:00 "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 keep Read more:Friendly
, Update
First Set Of Results 2008-04-02 15:59:00 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. Read more:First
Energy Efficient Drives 2008-04-06 20:27:00 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 Read more:Energy
In The Name Of The Father 2008-04-14 14:36:00 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,
National Compost Awareness Week 2008-04-21 19:06:00 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 NationalCompostAwareness
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 hav
Flat Packed 2008-04-23 16:44:00 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 caricatu Read more:Packed
BioDiesel 2008-04-24 17:57:00 "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 ar
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