Every year on the first Monday of September a grand fair takes up the whole of St Giles, which is the widest street in Oxford. It starts by the Randolph Hotel and the Ashmolean Museum, where one can still see King Alfred’s jewel, and by the time you reach the other end you must decide whether to go to Woodstock or Banbury.
The Fair is set up on both sides of the street, also down the middle. We have to go every year because, by the following Wednesday, we are often back in school, where, if we have not been, we will not be able to talk about the latest rides or what we won on the cheating rifles.
The very best moment to go down is at night. Huge dark lorries at the backs of the rides, all down along the walls of Balliol and St John’s, churn out smoke from thundering engines. Massive tubes and cables snake from their entrails towards the brilliantly lit, garishly coloured, fairground attractions like the Waltzer, the Dodgems or the Haunted House. At each ride loud music blares, where the entire American Top Ten can be heard in a hundred yard stretch. The rides need so much power to overcome inertia that Elvis drops a full minor third as one starts, before slowly picking up again. The place is heaving with excited, jostling people. We need our wits about us.
The Rides
Some are in the same place every year and I always start at Savage’s Famous Old Horses That Have Given Pleasure to Thousands, as can be read all around the top (or something like it). This is a ride for families or juniors but it is still a wonderful, majestic ride. Horses, cockerels and other beasts swirling round, ranged several layers deep.
I like to stand observing how the mechanism works to allow them to career round and round whilst going up and down, all in a single movement. The ride hardly stops in between changes before the fairmen appear, stepping expertly from board to board to collect the money just as it is beginning to go round again.
Right in the middle stands the organ, with automatons dressed in sequins placed on each side, one male, one female, either banging drums or clashing cymbals. The music is fed into a slot via a continuous folded sheet punched with a million holes. I can see a loud bit coming up where the holes suddenly double and spread right across the card.
Further along is the Boxing Ring where anyone stupid enough can Challenge the Champ. In the cold evening, a fat man stands bawling at the entrance, holding on to a mean-looking boxer with a crooked face that scowls at everyone. He wears big red gloves but only a flimsy pair of silk shorts to cover the rest of his body, trying not to shiver. You take pity on him. He looks as though he can be beaten.
As soon as a mug falls for that one and agrees to fight, they take the adults’ money as everyone files into the tent for the fight. It’s not fair because we are not allowed in. Adults can do a whole list of things denied to us, like most good films, naked women, going into pubs – and certain things at a fair.
The Waltzer is an extraordinary ride, with separate seats for four people in a kind of huge cup. These all circle round attached in a long line but are also designed to spin on the spot as they do. Each cup has a brake inside to slow it down as it spins. When released, the weight of the people in the seats makes the car whip round in a circle really fast.
If four girls climb in together a fairman will stand on the back to slow it down as they all go round. With an expert flip of the body he will jump off to make it spin wildly, all four screaming loudly. I notice a lot of the rides use screaming girls to make it sound more exciting.
The Dodgems are a good ride too but do not last long enough and always display notices saying No Bumping. Whereas the whole point of the Dodgems, everyone knows, is precisely not to dodge ’em but to head straight for one’s mates and crash into them as much as possible, with as big a lurch as can be managed.
Everyone is trying to do it to everyone else and even we are caught out. The shock of being bumped nearly makes us fall out. Our favourite target is the soppy Dad with the little kid tucked in between his legs. We ram them good and proper, especially if it is a little girl. They have super little steering wheels which turn right round so we can spin on the spot because we are clever and thus outwit our rivals. We like them because it gives us a chance to drive a real car and be Stirling Moss for five minutes.
And here is the Crocodile Lady straight from Egypt or somewhere like that, where they charge us a shilling to go in to see the Freak. I went in once, emerging disappointed at how little effort they had made. For even I could see she was an ordinary woman in a wig lying in straw, her bottom half pushed into a crocodile skin, surrounded by plastic parrots and other exotica.
She tried to show her fangs, but looked more like a lion when she did, than a crocodile. If they had laid her down in water like a real crocodile she would have died of pneumonia by the end of the Fair. She was more like a parody of a mermaid.
– What did you expect? says Grandad. Tinkers only need to take your money once; then what does it matter to them if you discover you’ve been had?
He used to be a policeman…
***
All the rides at St Giles’ have got to be the biggest in the world and, at the far end on the site, they always put the Helter Skelter, which is truly very high. It is painted white with red and blue details all down its flat octagonal sides.
I pay my money, am given a doormat and have to climb steep wooden stairs adults worry a child will fall through, till I come out at the top. Not for another year will I see this view again and I am Lord of all I survey, but the youth posted up here to keep the punters and thus the money moving, puts my mat down at the head of the slide, and sends me on my way with a rough shove almost before I have time to sit down. Upon a peak in Darien? Forget it.
I career down, bumping as I hit each segment, hardly thinking to look out, until I land at the bottom in a mess, jumping up smartish or I will be flattened by the six-footer coming down behind me. I marvel this old ride is still here from before electricity, apart from the million bulbs that light it up, just using gravity to charm us, for all our worldliness.
***
Dotted around the big rides are a lot of small booths which are more in my price range and where prizes can actually be won.
We start with the ducks because they look easy. It says A Prize Every Time in the special writing only seen at fairs or in cheap stores. It is a round stall with a woman in the middle who is trained not to look as if she minds when someone wins. Most fairground folk hate it when someone wins, doing their best to stop it happening, but this stall appears to run against tradition. Around her are perched so many colourful toys I can’t make them out, but I do see the huge teddies or exciting looking transistor radios wrapped in dusty plastic bags dangling from the roof. All Made in Hong Kong.
In front of all this is a kind of river flowing round from right to left on which a load of coloured plastic ducks with hooks on their backs. They pass by so close it’s easy. We pay our money and to each one she gives a cane with a ring on the end. We use this to catch the hook of any one of the ducks as they swim round, hauling it out of the water to claim our prize.
Or that’s the theory. For as I hover over a hook, another duck comes along, making it spin round so the hook now faces the other way. I try another, and so on, until I trap one in the ring. Now I realise that not only do I have to lift the cane up, I also have to keep it moving to the left, as well as giving it a deft twist as I lift the duck clear of the water.
Meanwhile, unnoticed, the next duck has floated on to the other side of the stall.
The movement of the water makes it difficult for right-handed people, because the duck is always moving away from them at the crucial moment. But I am left-handed and gain that extra second or two to hook the duck, but as I move to take it out of the water, I lean on it, the duck tips up on its nose and promptly unhooks itself.
A little boy gives up, handing the lady back the stick but, with a yell, mine finally comes up. Not pausing to congratulate me, mechanically, she takes the stick, unhooks the duck, shows me a number on its bottom, puts it back on the water.
I have won a number one. I had not noticed the prizes were numbered one or two. I am given a plastic skeleton that glows in the dark.
– Cor, that’s all right, says the little boy.
I walk off with my prize, the fancier number twos still dangling from the roof.
***
As we grow older we become wiser to these tricks and no-one I know ever goes more than once on the Hoop-La.
Rows of ten-pound jars of sweets stand on big green boxes behind which a man stands, peeling five big wooden hoops off his arm for a tanner. Here we can win the huge jars of sweets simply when the hoop goes over the jar and we are suddenly excited if one of them does. We jump up and down, shouting, pointing.
Without saying a word, the bored man points to the hoop hooked on one corner of the green stand, then to a sign in fairground script saying Hoops Must Lie Flat To Win. He does this about ten times a minute for three whole days which must be boring for him.
I look around. No-one can be seen in the whole fairground carrying around a huge jar of sweets and after that I swear never to go on a Hoop-La again, if I have any sense.
We graduate to the Coconut Shies where the nuts are jammed so hard into holders with sawdust it makes it impossible to knock them out with one ball. If we have a strong teenager or man with us, with an accurate throw, it is possible to walk off with a coconut under each arm. But when we get it home all the pleasure goes, such is the rigmarole of eating a coconut.
I start by trying to hold it upright, simultaneously piercing it with a meat skewer in order to drain off the milk. This tastes exotic but only a mouthful is ever to be found inside. It’s worse still if I have to share. Then I take it out onto the back step to hit it repeatedly with a hammer to break it open. The hammer bounces off at dangerous angles, clobbering my knee instead, as the coconut shoots across the yard. This breaks it into unmanageable pieces with the shell still stuck on. When I do finally break a bit off I end up chewing the same piece for hours, because it just will not go down for some reason.
***
Finally, as sophisticated fairgoers, we are ready for the Darts or the Rifles. These are target practice games where the target is difficult to hit because the weapon is skewed permanently away from true flight, just enough for you always to miss. The plastic feathers on the darts sit to one side and, although the others line up the sights of the air rifle on the bull, they never can hit it.
Not so yet again for the left-handed, because my kack-handedness somehow compensates for the skew, which after all has been built in by and for right-handers. Now, although my aim is inaccurate, I can make the rifle hit the target.
Rifles are better than darts somehow. I do not ever become really reliable at darts but I always excel at the rifles which is how I manage to come home with a prize most days. Sometimes they give me a damn coconut though, even from a rifle stall.
All the fun of the fair
Our Warden, Mr Llewellyn, likes to organise Big Outings where we are all together somewhere Outside. Today I’m in luck. This year we are all going down to St Giles’ Fair together.
It is raining as it does in Oxford in this season of the year. Mr Llewellyn makes us wear our macs, which is a real problem. Because we know they will not make us look good to the girls in the crowd.
We are to catch the bus. Oxford buses are still painted in their turn of the 20th century livery, brown roofs with red bodywork, a sickly green stripe around the middle, Oxford written in gold along the side. Because of the low bridges in the City, the roofs have to be lower than normal, with a neat passageway for moving upstairs set in a well to one side.
The top deck is the only place to travel on a bus because we have a good view of the crowd. We can laugh at all the odd people without them knowing, because people rarely look up. My friend Billy is good at wolf-whistling at girls from out of the top windows. He has perfected a piercing whistle by making a circle of his thumb and middle finger, then putting them in his lips up against his teeth. I watch him do it, to try and get the hang of it – but never do.
He climbs onto his knees on the furry benches, opens the sliding window to lean his face out, whistles and sits down smartish. We have a good laugh as they look round wondering who whistled. We can also spit on people from up here too or throw other kids’ clothes out onto the top of the bus shelter – if we want to be really mean.
When one climbs the spiralling stairs to the top deck, a sort of well runs down one side which is the passageway to the seats. These are long benches arranged in serried rows where, in my infernal school shorts, I burn my legs as I shuffle along the felt seat to make room for someone else. We trap girls up one end by refusing to move when they have to get off so they might miss their stop.
This footwell also makes for an interesting hazard downstairs on the offside seats, since it forms a bulkhead over the head of the people sitting near the windows. Big signs everywhere say Mind Head When Leaving Seat but someone always forgets and smacks it as they stand to get off.
[You laugh, brutalisation well on its way.]
The Rotor
We arrive in Cornmarket Street, walk down in a crocodile to the Fair. It is drizzling and we are made to button up our coats right up as we are given strict instructions on the hour and place for our return. We go off in our Family Groups, which is sissy, so Billy and I give them the slip, which is easy to do at a Fair.
We wander round trying out as many things as possible as our candy floss collapses in the rain into a floppy slab of red sugar and has to be discarded. Billy wins a coconut and I do well as usual on the rifles.
Then suddenly there it is.
I am the first to spot the New Ride.
Hey. A huge red cylinder stands before me with coloured lights all up it, a door at the bottom, a staircase up the side. People enter and exit the round space at the bottom; as the next lot leave, we catch a glimpse of an empty wooden room with black walls.
It looks just like the Wall of Death they used to have, where motor bikes roared round and round sideways on without falling down. This sounds pretty interesting but we were never allowed to have a go so after a while it was boring to look at, precisely because no-one fell down. That ride disappeared a few years back.
We stand back from the double queue at the bottom of this high tower and look up. At the very top, so it will be seen from all over St Giles, written in hundreds of red bulbs, in five large letters, we read, ROTOR. Pause.
– What’s that, Ginger? I say, temporarily Biggles.
– How would I know, says Billy with a shrug, let’s go have a look.
He has spotted a side staircase, in front of which stands one of the queues.
Clever these fairmen. Since this is a new ride, no-one really knows what it is. It sounds deliciously dangerous what with all the screaming but we are unable to see what actually happens inside when it is working. Not many people would take the risk to go on a new ride that blind. So first, obvious, sell the punters a look at it from up the top for cheap. Trust me, when we have seen it, we will think it is so brilliant we just have to have a go.
On the way down, we are shepherded down another stair which, surprise, surprise, comes out at the back of the other queue for the entrance to the ride. Of course we will wait there to partake in the most amazing thrill of their lives.
We have to queue for ages to reach the top of the stairs but what greets us is magical. We are in a sort of cage looking down onto the round room as the people file in beneath us. They are instructed to stand with their heels together, backs pressed against the wall. The wall is lined in black rubber covered in little ridges. When about twenty people are installed in the room they close the door and bright lights come on, music blares and the room starts to turn on its axis.
As it speeds up crikey the floor begins to rise, pushing the people up the walls. It goes faster and faster, the lights flash on, off, until the whole room is spinning round at a rare old lick. Our bit stays still but the whole cylinder quakes. The lights change in one brilliant flash, we hear a bang, they start to scream.
And scream.
For the floor has dropped away. They are suspended, flies stuck to the wall as the cylinder spins crazily round. Slowly, one or two of them start to turn sideways, a girl’s long hair spreads out behind her, money falls from a boy’s pocket but, best of all, one of the girls turns right upside down so we can see her knickers.
This is amazing. At that point a whine sets in, the room gradually beginning to slow. As it does, the people slip further and further down the wall until they are gently deposited in a dishevelled heap on the floor. The ride stops, the helpers come in and move them out quickly to fit the next lot in.
By then we have reached the top of the down stair and we know where we have to go. Billy and I wait, hiding our fear of what we have just seen, building each other up ready for the ride, trying to work out ways of not turning upside down. I shift my change to another pocket as we talk and before we know it we are in the cylindrical room.
It is huge, the gallery at the top very brightly lit, but a long way up. Like seasoned pros, we put our heels against the wall, press our backs into its slightly rounded shape. The doors are already shut, the room beginning to turn. I am directly opposite a girl in a skirt with tits in a white mohair jumper so I should have a good view if anything happens.
With a jerk the floor starts coming up, which is when I panic. My raincoat is sticking to the rubber wall as we go up, making me start to bend at the knees. What is worse, I have forgotten to undo the top button and I am slowly being strangled. The centrifugal force makes it impossible to move my limbs. I am unable to get my hand to the button. I frantically claw at the air, try to shout for attention but my throat is closed. The drag is pulling me right out of shape. I am going to die on this ride.
The floor suddenly drops.
I am spinning very fast, standing only on air. Bent almost double, I lie almost sideways but at least the pulling on my windpipe has stopped. The hand I have been trying to move is trapped by my side, the other one slung carelessly across the wall, immovable. My legs have turned sideways as they were bent up so my feet are stuck to the wall at a funny angle. I look all broken. A right old mess.
The ride is already slowing as I complete the turn to slide head first for the floor, landing in a crumpled heap on the polished floor, upside down, my neck bent sideways with my bum out. As I try to work out which way is up, four huge hands have grabbed me, flipped me through the air and landed me on my feet the right way. They push me in a particular direction and I end up outside.
Billy is out, his eyes shiny with elation, talking in rapid fire sentences, not noticing that my skeleton has moved inside my body, radically altering my shape.
– Did you ever do anything like that in your life? he says. My God it was fantastic. I have to go on it again. Did you see the girl opposite you? She was amazing. You could see her suspenders.
So on and so forth, I forget the rest.
My neck is where my shoulder should be with one hip under my ear. The left foot faces backwards as I breathe through an armpit. How am I going to get it all back in the right place?
– Here, hold on, I hear Billy say.
He grabs my raincoat at the shoulders and gives a hefty yank round to the left simultaneously pulling it down hard. The top button flies off into the crowd. My body suddenly feels normal. I can breathe again. What a relief.
– Er, thanks, I say, unsure of how he performed this major surgery so quickly without anaesthetic. But he is already at a man’s elbow.
Trouble
– Got a watch mister? he says.
Oh no. The bus. We are late for the bus.
Like rabbits in a hailstorm we bolt half the length of St Giles in a couple of minutes, dodging as many obstacles on the way as possible.
– Sorry sir! Excuse me Madam! Mind out sonny! And finally crash through the crowd onto the pavement by the stop.
They are all huddled, waiting. I have never seen Auntie Nancy this much besides herself.
– Where the hell have you been for the last hour? she cries, catching hold of Billy’s arm.
Mr Llewellyn, who normally stays calm, piles right in too. His face has gone all white and pinched.
– What were the arrangements you were asked to follow? grabbing my shoulder so hard it hurts.
The kids are especially upset with us.
Now anyone normal, like if we had been them, after we had bunked off, we would have had all our fun and waited to meet up again at the rendezvous. Everyone knew where and when that was, and me and Billy would have been back, give or take a few minutes perhaps. Instead, the stupid adults have made them spend all their time at the fair looking for us, not going on any rides, while we had the most fun.
– You could have been dead, for all we knew, screams Auntie Nancy. You could have died.
Indeed we are dying – to tell them all what a fantastic Fair it was this year, of our wonderful discovery – but they keep banging on about arrangements, how worried everyone was although they’ve already said it a hundred times.
We can’t see what all the fuss is about, especially as another bus comes up in a few minutes so we still reach the Home all right. We feel cheated not to be able to share the good news with anyone. We have to go to bed as soon as we get in, denied pocket money until October.
Adults, pa!
Categories: Event
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