a fairground life

The holidays are finally over and it was time to take the Santa train down. Well he has done two weeks overtime! The ride only has one build up and pull down a year. As a result its not very organised. We have to lift everything onto a trailer piece at a time. Then transport it down to the truck. Lift it all off again before packing it in the truck (double handling). The carriages are quite heavy and have to be man handled into place. If we were doing this every weekend as with the other rides, no doubt a winch and racking would be fitted. Several trips, three and a half hours later, job done. All packed into a 40ft truck, Confucius would say that the load will expand to the available space. Not to disappoint him, our 40ft truck is full from end to end with one small ride because that's the area available. Not to worry, it only does two journeys a year, once there and once back! So tomorrow the truck will be parked for another year. This time next week we will be taking the rest of the equipment down. It just suddenly occurred to me that there will be dozens of Christmas fairs packing up tonight around the country. Most showmen will be looking forward to going on holiday in the next few weeks, I'm going in the shed.