My Mother said

I never should

Play with the Gypsies

In the Wood.

            For those of you Johnny and Joanna-Come-Latelies new to all things Other Sidey, perhaps a little explanation might be in order. Your correspondent was once an habitué of the Ol’ Ink Line, albeit of an Edgware variety, and has yet to shake off the safety of his old sub-urban self. He currently resides in a room with a view of a garden, that reveals to him all the world writ small. The Fat Cat, the bullying Squirrel, The pestilential Pigeon and lately the portentous and malevolent Magpie, not to mention the beady-eyed Buzzard. All of these he wages war on, on behalf of the littler boids whose perilous existence is blighted by the ravenous appetites of the aforementioned. To those of you hardened Othersiders, no such explanation is necessary. So, to work. Oh yes, one other thing, your correspondent was recently hauled before the Judge for terming those peripatetic purveyors of pestilential pigeon food with a word beginning with P. I vowed that it would not happen again…

            Today being a Sunday that opens to a week that has more holidays than weekdays for those with school-age kids, the evidence of The Travelling Show is hard to miss. These Romany Folk sure know how to slide under the skin of a 9 year old. The little red posters dotted around on knee-high railings and the flailing arm that throws squawking teens to heights the trees cannot shade are veritable beacons to those with a predilection for cheap thrills and cheaper goods. Except that as a parent I know that there’s nothing cheap about a visit to the Fair! I offer all sorts of events not normally on offer to distract or divert. To no avail. So today, I declined my Mother’s well-worn advice and took the kids down to the Fair beside the Woods, knowing I was gonna get royally ripped orf!

            Mine eye, that is normally on the alert for displays of rampant greed and weight throwing in the Garden, was refocused on the more blatant Commercialism on display down the Park. The coffers were stocked carefully and folded with an embrace. As in; ‘you can kiss that lot goodbye!’ and orft we strolled to the gaping entrance. You had to pay to get fleeced!!! That was a new one on me; coughing up to take a gander at the means of one’s own bankruptcy! They’ve been watching the mercantile activities of Mister Squirrel and his stupefied Pigeon Pals. We pays our money, we’re deemed fit for entry; all the usual is on offer, aimed at the kids but demanding the wallet of an adult. We place our limits and put the notes to the touchpaper. Dodgems still work. Also there’re a few more death-defying rides that might warrant the venture weren’t it for the gourmet burger that has barely entered the spreading, middle-aged gut! (Is that a new diet? Eat what y’like and then visit the funfair. Not fun for those below and not fair for the poor P… Travellin’ Man, that hasta clean it up.)

            So the kids choose their rides: 9 year old has to be restrained from dangers that he isn’t big enough to qualify for: Middle still throws himself at bouncy castles with joyful abandon and Youngest will ride anything with Barbie on it! Thank God she’s a girl. (Todd Haynes notwithstanding). And being a caring-sharing kinda Guy I haveta be on the Dodgem Mat to prevent bullying and injury. And then it strikes me. This is actually all quite tame. Do any of you remember when the Fair had an Edge? When there was the threat of actual bodily harm. Sure the rides are still a little rickety and the veneer of safety is pretty thin but, didn’t it used to be that the guys who operated the Dodgems would ride around on the backs, chatting up your girlfriend and dropping their ciggies down your pants? That the Gangs would come out at night and cruise for a bruise?  Maybe that’s all gone as we eradicate the Travellers right to roam and plant a caravan. Seemed today that all the Fairsmen and women were of a foreign extraction. And, no, I don’t mean Romany. Maybe, with kids I just go at the wrong time, but it did always seem to me that the Fair carried danger at all times; Setting Up, Playing and Moving on.

            Now, as with most of the interesting jobs, seems that none of the locals wanna do it. They’re more interested in the dull stuff that pays the wonga, thinking that they can experience the wilder ways of life with a vacation. I sit and bemoan, in written and oral word, the encroachments of the Bully, the Spying Eye, the Swarming Gluttony, Rapacious Commerce and those that will not create but only steal in Black and White knowing nothing but detail. And with all their increasing heft comes the disappearance of a certain freedom to take it to the edge. A liberty that encouraged investigation and trying your luck. Now, all seems a little (actually, a lot) sanitised, safe and stupid. It’s all done for our own protection I know, but it ends with us merely plasticene in the hands of those who would profit by keeping us scared and stupefied. Enough, back to the Fair.

            So we get to the end, a long traipse, and the kids’ve been good so we allow them an extra. An opportunity to win. To take home a memento of the visit. The Girly gets help to snag two princesses that provide her with enough shite plastic jewellery to festoon her naked body at bath-time, Middler takes his opportunity to avail himself of Bart and a Green Bloke to get his hands on a dart-shooting gun that’ll last 2 days. Max. Eldest tho’ is determined to chance his arm at the new variant of the coconut shy; tin cans and sponge balls. The prizes look bigger and the task at hand more mature. I explain that this is no ‘Everybody wins’ scenario, that if he doesn’t knock ‘em all down, offa the shelf, he gets nothing at all. Nada. He’s up for it and I’m pleased he’s having a go. So pleased I join him. We both leave ashamed at the staggeringly poor aim of our throwing arm and I think of the “fixed’ balls.

And I get a second Hit. This is all money well spent. Better than any institutional education, this is an opportunity to educate on a profound and very basic level. This is basic survival in the Urban Environment of the 21stC. If they promise that you will win, then the product must be crap, made in that shite-making factory in Asia. If they promise you that you cannot miss, rest assured, you will. And if they tell you that your enjoyment is their highest aim, know that their actual target is lower and much more venal. I carefully open up the economics of the Fair to my sad young man; the age old marketing ploys, the carefully placed lights and ramped up music, the precision feng shwei of all the attractions and, with a glint of smug satisfaction, I lay bare before my son the barely concealed grasping before his very eyes in all its true mendacity. And did he thank me for it? Did he say “oh I see, I feel much better now.” Did he bollox, he stormed off in a huff, jealous of his brother’s orange and black rifle and his sister’s sparkling tiara. But, I’m taking him back next year! No, I’m taking him again next week. Bank Hols. Better a fiver now on a stack o’ tin cans than thousands later on some stolen jalopy outta Loot and a Life Insurance Plan that’ll leave him starving and forlorn in the nick.

It does seem to me that Mr Grey and the Fat Cat have so sanitised our experiences, endeavours and educations that it’s time to head for the woods and roughen ourselves up with the Gypsies a little. Next time I’m gonna take him after dark; let him take a girl on the dodgems and see if he comes back with ciggie burns; give him the cash to throw puff balls at tin cans all night long; feed him just before he goes, on the richest food in the house, and not be there when he hurls! That my friends is Education and you’ll only get it if, like Little Red, you’re brave enough to enter the Woods.