a fairground life

Tuesday
I wake "w" up for school, while her mother runs her to school I have a short lay in. At 10am I leave to build up the dropzone. "r" and "m" are otherwise engaged so I will do it myself. I arrive on site just before 11am. Thankfully the rain has stopped (it was bouncing off the wagon roof at 5 am this morning). The DZ is not a hard piece of equipment to erect, I get a couple of lifts from friends when I need them for the bass bins. I swear, I will find some where to put them so I wont need to lift the f*@%!*s any more. For some reason the tower bolts seem awkward and take a little longer today (probably just tiredness). I have the ride fully erected for 2:30pm. Then I spend another 30 minutes adjusting the tension of the wire ropes. I noticed they seemed a bit looser at the hire (no wonder with all those full runs). They only need 25mm to take up the slack. At 3pm I leave to return to the yard. A quick shower and on the road to Stranraer again. On the way the jeep cut out. I had to reset the imobiliser with the key. That's twice in two days now, so that will need returned for a service. Hope it makes the journey back on Saturday night OK while towing the trailer. We arrived at Stranraer just after 6pm. Its the third week now and business is dead. This used to be a two week fair with the last Monday as the gaff day, opening from 1pm. Now the Monday is just another ordinary night. The tenants used to leave here and stop at Girvan for a week fair, but that has went by the wayside. Another fair that followed here was Ayr and that too is no longer on. I myself used to leave here and go to Perth for two weeks to finish the season off, some others still do, I will be stopping at Glasgow. Business is that good tonight I am writing this while we are open. Suppose I better hang it up now and try to encourage some punters onto the machine.
Wednesday
The sun is shining again and I decide to get on with finishing painting the miami boat frame. So I do another section. Now a tip for any other showman who may be reading this and is going to paint under their miami boat (slim chance I know). Tip- start with the boat low and paint accross the frame at shoulder height, then raise the boat a couple of feet and paint accross at shoulder height again. Repeat this until the boat is above your head, by then the frame is finished and the wet painted parts are moving up away from you. Sounds simple I know, but until you acctually do it the wrong way-you won't think of this, that is why it will take me another day to finish this job as I was having to work over the wet paint I had just applied.
I have attached some photos from the hire event- look how high the twist was and imagine the dodgem being higher before it was moved! The bouncy castle would not fit inside so we improvised.