Hullwebs History of Hull
Hull Fair Image Gallery
October 1971 |
 P4240134 |
P4240135 |
P4240136 |
P4240141 |
P4240142 |
 P4240143 |
P4240144 |
P4240145 |
P4240150 |
P4240151 |
| Image | Description | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P4240134 | One of the rides I (Alan Brigham) went to work on. We spent about a half of one hour on this ride before transferring over to the Hurricanes. | |||
| P4240135 | The bumping cars where everyone was waiting for the arrival of the Lord Mayor for the opening ceremony. | |||
| P4240136 | Making up a ride - was it a waltzer? - on the day before the fair was due to open. | |||
| P4240141 | Ready to pounce on the next set of customers on, (Crows?) 'Hurricane Jets'. Alan Brigham in the white coat with school friend David Newton on his right. While working the rides was fun, it was also amazing hard work, with only seconds to collect the cash from your set of customers as the ride only ever stopped for a few seconds. | |||
| P4240142 | Ever the opportunist, Dennis Brigham photographed his son, my brother, Leslie Brigham in the ideal location. | |||
| P4240143 | The inevitable argument about change which, invariably, slowed the collecting down and resulted in a flying lesson on the side of a ride as you tried to collect the last of the cash. Most of the arguments were over the children's fares as they parents never wanted to pay full-fare for their kids. | |||
| P4240144 | Neil Brigham in the pram (he has let go of the ball now) and sister Julie impersonating the Scales of Justice with a brace of goldfish. Problem was, our father, Dennis, was just too good at darts. He never lost. | |||
| P4240145 | The opening ceremony. | |||
| P4240150 | Now why didn't take the job on this ride? Although it looks like a simple life, many of the smaller ride had no power and were turned by hand using a large crank handle. | |||
| P4240151 | Duplicate. | |||
| Story | In 1971 when David Newton and I worked on the fair, we didn't quite expect the wage packet we received at the end of the first night. As I remember it, we had six cars each, with two passengers per car paying £1.50 per ride. Each ride lasted four minutes and the turn-around, getting the old punters out and new ones in and paid for, lasted two minutes. After 7pm, thanks to a continuous queue, this was easily achieved. The ride easily cleared £1,000 that first evening. All to the nonstop sound of Rod Stewart's Maggie May. When we took the job on, we did so on the offer of a share in the daily take. I can't remember if we were told what this percentage would be, but we were expecting a lot more than the 10/- (50p) we were given at the end of the evening (midnight?). I have often wondered what happened the following night when we didn't turn up! |
|||
All content Copyright © 2004 - Hullwebs (UK) - Terms of Use