Just A Lil Bit of Funfair

Listen to the roustabouts call. Have a thrill at the awesome rides or try your luck at the sidestall booths. Marvel at the sights and sounds from wondrous places that you've never heard before. Meet the Bearded Lady and the mysterious Mermaid.

Simply hard to resist. Since I had the entire evening off, I realized I might as well find out what the local yokels did in their spare hours! Didn't take long before I found a beeline making for the local travelling carnival in town.

Seriously. A funfair. I haven't even been to one for the past decade or more.

So what are they? Like the ephemeral mushrooms that come with the rain, funfairs are makeshift amusement parks that appear mysteriously in the night and disappear weeks later quite as suddenly. A decidedly quaint relic of the past slowly ( and sadly! ) getting driven out of business by the likes of reality TV, cybercafes and Playstations. Few urbanites today would leave the creature comforts of the air-conditioned gigamalls just to tramp through the muddy grass of the funfair grounds for a simple game of hoopla.

Sheer nostalgia however had me purchasing tickets for most of the offered rides. Surely a thrill for the uninitiated but I doubt the outdated kiddie roller coasters here would intimidate the cynical tweens of today. Definitely pales in comparison to the exhilarating death-defying rides available in larger amusement parks.


Come take a joyride with me!
However eager to show support, I managed a reasonably hysterical scream each time it approached a steep drop. Incline couldn't have been more than 45 degrees yet I screeched like a wailing banshee. Must have looked quite the fool caterwauling like crazy on cue but hell, I had fun. Never can understand rigid, tight-lipped folks who grit their teeth throughout the rides. What's the fun in that? Just holler dammit!

Even went up the little ferris wheel. Bet there are zero safety standards in place here but what the hell! The rickety gondolas probably go up only twenty metres or so up in the air - falling would probably a broken limb at the most. So I went up with barely a qualm. Unfortunately not much of a view though since the town itself had already gone pitch-dark.

Then it was off to the booths. Bought some cotton candy to munch on while I tried on the games. Hoops onto rings, darts onto boards, pellets onto ducks, that sorta thing. Since I have lousy hand-to-eye coordination, obviously I didn't win any toys. Not even the pint-sized orange bear dangling on a string. Sorry, babe.

Just lucky I didn't fling the brass ring onto the stall owner's bulbous nose.