The Show Must Go On

by Bernard Ross

  After a few minutes of silence Mr Rose turned to Fred with a smile and said, ‘See, I told you it could be done, we just needed to find someone stupid enough to do it!’

  If I’d been a bigger man I’d have brained the twat.

  We were heading for St. Albans and, in those days, the roads were pretty empty on a Sunday. Our average speed must have been in the region of ten to fifteen miles an hour, but when we came to climb a hill, it dropped to less than walking pace. If a hill was steep in any way the train we had; three heavily laden trailers behind a relatively underpowered and over-laden truck, just couldn’t make it. So the showmen had a complicated but effective method of getting everything up the slope.

  Whilst the rest of the convoy trundled past up the hill, Mr Rose stopped the Diamond T at the foot of the hill as close as he could get to the start of the climb. We didn’t need to find a lay-by, the traffic was so light that it didn’t really matter that we blocked our side of the carriageway. Fred applied the brakes on the train and then, leaving the engine running, Mr Rose, Fred and I all leapt out of the cab. We ran back and hand locked the brakes on the second and third trailer and then chocked each of the trailer’s rear wheels with timber packing from the belly boxes. We then uncoupled the second trailer leaving the tractor and the first of the trailers ready to tackle the hill. We got back in the cab and slowly, with much grinding of gears and gouts of greasy, black smoke, we hauled the remaining trailer to the top of the hill. There we parked up, braked, chocked and uncoupled the first trailer, leaving it with the rest of the convoy, who, by now had parked up and made a brew or even lunch for us all. After a cuppa, Mr Rose carried out a forty-seven-point turn of the Diamond T and headed back down the hill. Another forty-seven-point turn put the truck in front of the trailers and the process was then repeated twice to get all of the train to the top of the hill. Then everything was coupled up again and after a delay of a couple of hours, we were back en route.

  Chapter 4

  The Showman’s Apprentice - The New Boy

  It was five pm on Sunday evening by the time we arrived at the green in St. Alban’s for the next week’s show.

  We were not the first on site; for every temporary funfair there was a character that enjoyed the wonderful title of the Riding Master. The Riding Master was the person who arranged the hire of the site, usually from the local authority, and then advertised, more often than not in a ‘trade paper’ called “The World’s Fair”, for individual showmen to take pitches at the fair.

  The Riding Master for this particular fair had already driven markers into the ground to show where each showman’s vehicles needed to be parked and Fred and I jumped out of the cab and followed Mr Rose as he drove a sweeping arc to the spot for each trailer. When he stopped in place, we quickly uncoupled the last trailer and soon the three trailers were in a neat, curving extended line, linking up with all the other brightly painted vehicles and trailers, and adding the promise of fun and excitement to the otherwise almost virgin area of the village green.

  Mr Rose drove the Diamond T to a position behind and about thirty yards behind the curve and parked it up. The two Gardner diesel generators mounted on its back would be vital to provide the power and light for the rides, but the smell of their exhaust and the noise they created needed to be kept away from the money making area.

  Mr Rose killed the engine and as the metal cooled it ticked quietly in the damp evening air. Don appeared out of nowhere and as Mr Rose went off to give instructions at other people, Don dragged me over to the governor’s van to help to level it up. This was when I first met Old Mrs Rose, Mr Rose’s venerable mother.

  Mr Rose’s Mum’s van was an historic work of art. The outside was constructed of tongue and groove timber slats painted a bright red with gold detailing. The roof was an elegant bow with a lantern above to allow extra light into the inside. As we levelled it up I had only a glimpse inside, but clearly it was full of shiny porcelain and mirrors galore. It was also full of Old Mrs Rose, so work was carried out in respectful quiet in deference to the elderly lady. Don informed me that Gran hadn’t actually left the van for at least five years, and she had only moved out temporarily on that occasion so that Mr Rose could replace the old, iron rimmed wagon wheels with pneumatic tyres, commonly referred to by the older folk as ‘balloons’.

  Once Don was satisfied that Gran was on the level, we moved on to the Rose family’s other trucks, trailers and vans. The only job to do tonight was levelling up the living wagons and the generators. Everyone who was physically able mucked in, heaving timber baulks and swinging sledgehammers. Spirit levels were in use but a lot of the work was done by Mark 1 eyeball, the showmen and their lads having been doing this week-in week-out for every summer of their lives. After a couple of hours, we were finished and the entire show people’s living wagons and the heavy trucks with their generators were levelled. The trailers with the rides on were in the right places and so now it was time to down tools and settle in for the night. Mr Rose’s brother, Mr Charles, and his wife Anne, went to the Old Mrs Rose’s van for a glass of port, before returning to their own for supper. Anne would later take Old Mrs Rose her supper on a tray. Don and I went to the local pub for some food and a pint and, in Don’s own words, to check out the local talent.

  I was eking out my meagre cash supply so it was relatively early in the evening that I left Don chatting up a pretty, local girl and headed back to the fairground. I went to the same truck I’d slept in the night before, climbed in and found the same spot in which to curl up, fully dressed and try to fall asleep. I have to say that I slept the sleep of the righteous, but the next morning I still awoke cold and stiff at about 6am to the sound of people moving around in the dawn and coughing and talking.

  As I climbed down from the back of the truck Don appeared, looking as fresh as a daisy, and we went together over to see Mr Rose. Anne had a big teapot and jam jars of hot, strong and very sweet tea were handed round whilst Mr Rose allocated tasks. Don and I were to help Mr Rose and Fred the Brakes to get the Waltzer levelled up and the roof on. We laboured for three hours unfolding huge floor panels, digging in sleepers, packing between sleepers and joists with timber baulks to get the floor level, and bolting the whole thing down. After a couple of hours of this my soft clerk’s hands were blistered and my back, still unused to heavy manual work, was aching. The floors were all ready however, so Mr Rose called a break.

  It was 9.30, we’d been up, and working for three and a half hours, luckily my 5 am starts at Baxter’s had inured to this hour of day but I was still relieved to walk down to the Cafe with Don and sink a full fry up and a cup of tea with barely a word.

  As I mopped up the last bits of egg and baked bean sauce with a bit of bread, Don announced that it would be a good idea to visit the loo prior to legging it back to work. Now, I was 15 years old at this stage and looked as if I were older, and it was quite a few years since anyone had taken it upon themselves to advise me about my toilet habits. I was really quite offended at Don’s apparent suggestion that I was so wet behind the ears that I needed him to manage me. He saw the colour rise up my cheeks and quickly pointed out that there was no loo at the fair and, now that it was daylight, the local worthies were sure to be less than impressed seeing us pissing, or worse, up against their trees.

  And so it was that ten minutes later, smelling sweetly of Wright’s Coal Tar Soap, we headed back to the ongoing job of getting the fair ready for the opening in a couple of days time.

  Mr Rose came out of his living wagon when he heard us approach and now we laboured for another couple of hours to get the roof on the ride. The panels were lighter than the floors and there was do digging to do, but all the work was up above your head and with a heavy rain beginning to fall the gloss painted timbers were slick and hard to keep hold of. Once the frame of rafters was sound and all the bolts were tightened ready for a week of violent rocking and rolling, the canvas
tilt was brought out and unrolled over the top of the ride. At last the roof was up and we were out of the rain.

  Mr Rose was happy that he and Fred had enough muscle to help him finish the Waltzer and so sent us off to the Dodgems to help his brother, Mr Charles Rose. I had picked up the fact that to avoid confusion the brother were known as and addressed as Mr Rose for Hammerton and Mr Charles for Charles Rose. Sratngely this convention was adhered to even when the brothers were not together. Don and I met up with Charlie, Mr Charles’ son who was now in charge of the last parts of setting up the Dodgems. I’d seen Charlie back at Buckhurst Hill and knew him by sight and name though I hadn’t been aware who he was. He was grateful for the help, but little did I know just how boring my next couple of hours were going to be.

  ‘Don, can you get the blocks behind the seats, and Bernie, you can do the bulbs’ he called as we arrived, pointing me to a stack of four large tea chests.

  Don grinned and said, in a voice laced with irony, “Oh, you lucky bastard!”

  ‘What?’ I asked in my innocence,

  Don told Charlie that he’d just show me the ropes before doing the blocks and led me to the tea chests.

  ‘Grab those two’ he said, picking up the first two chests and walking towards the ride.

  Grasping the lip of a tea chest in each hand, I followed him. When we got to the edge of the Dodgems we stepped up onto the large oval deck and walked between the cars to the end of the ride, here was the control booth, from where the showman both controlled the power to the cars and collected and managed all the takings. I started to get a frightening vision of why Don was so amused about my job allocation. The outside of the booth was completely covered with light sockets, and looking around I couldn’t help but notice that just about every flat surface that was not the floor was also covered. Don put down his boxes and reached into the first one, pulling out a bundle of newspaper. Carefully unwrapping the paper he produced, which a magician’s flourish, a coloured light bulb, which he held before my eyes with a big ‘ta-da’.

  ‘Behold!’ he said, ‘One light bulb’ and turning to the booth he pointed to one of the sockets, ‘And here we have....one light-bulb-holder’ He dropped his voice to a stage whisper and fixing me with an arch smile, he went on

  ‘Now watch, as I introduce the bulb to the socket and give a special twist, just one quarter turn clockwise...and...

  He jumped back to give a clear view of his handiwork,

  ‘One light bulb, fitted and ready to illuminate for the entertainment of the masses!’

  With this he bowed deeply saying, ‘Thank you, Thank you.’ to an imaginary audience.

  Then to me he said, in his normal voice,

  ‘There you go mate, I’ve done the first one, I reckon that only leaves you about five hundred left to do! Make sure you match the colour of the bulb to the colour of the paintwork on the panel, or Charlie’ll have your guts!’

  And, with that, he shot off to do his own job. As he went, I looked around the hive of activity that was a fair in the latter stages of build-up. It was quite clear that the dodgems ride was the single largest machine in the entire fair; it’s oval structure being almost three times the length of the other machines...and I, alone was going to have to illuminate the whole bloody thing!

  It took over four hours to unwrap, and place all the bulbs on the ride and by the time I’d finished my hands were sore and my wrist was aching. Don was long gone but Charlie was still around so I went over to him to tell him that I was finished with the bulbs.

  He told me where to stash the tea chests, now full solely of crumpled newspaper, and then said,

  ‘Right mush, knocking off time!’

  I’d never been so happy to hear those last three words.

  Chapter 5

  Learn Fast

  For the rest of that week I worked mostly with Don and Charlie, under the instructions of Mr Rose and Mr Charles. We touched up paintwork on rides, we fired up the monster generators and tested more bloody light bulbs, we fuelled up generators and checked over trucks, we walked around the town and the surrounding villages putting up posters and flyers, and generally did “make work” to keep busy.

  Mr Rose told me that my job when the show opened was to be a ‘money-taker’ on the Walzter, and so every time the generators were fired up the Waltzer would run and Don and Charlie taught me how to take money. I say ‘taught’; a great deal of it was just down to practice. Once the deck was rotating and the cars started spinning you really needed to get something akin to sea legs to avoid either hitting or being hit by something. You had to learn to tell by feel the denomination of a coin or a note, as well as to be able to do this at speed without holding on to anything. Don and Charlie had been doing it for years and were adept at not only doing it successfully but also with a studied nonchalance that made me extremely envious as I lurched from car to car, grabbing and clutching at anything and everything just to save myself from being jettisoned off the ride and onto the grass outside. After several short flights and painful landings, I earned the soubriquet of Bouncing Bernie, but I also got a grudging respect for my willingness to get up, dust myself off, absorb the bruises and get back in the saddle. There were times, later in my career ‘on the tober’, when I would regret this stoicism, but more of that later in this story.

  Under the expert tuition and the smirking grins of my two teachers, I soon became adequately adept (though certainly not expert) at counting heads, staying upright, collecting cash, making change, spinning my three cars as fast as I could and generally being more of an asset than a liability to Mr Rose. Consequently, when Thursday evening arrived and the show opened to the paying public, I was there, on the Waltzer, a money-taker, doing my best to look like a real showman and not a ‘flattie’, which was the term the fairground people had for people who lived in houses and did ‘’normal’ jobs.

  On the Waltzer that night Mr Rose was in the pay-box in the centre; he controlled the ride and oversaw the money. Though I didn’t know it at the time, he also kept a very close eye on all the cars, counting heads every ride and keeping a tally of how much money each of the money-takers should be handing in each ride. By the end of the night he knew, before he counted it, how much cash there should be in the galvanised dustbin into which all the coins were thrown. I was money-taker on three of the cars, Don had three cars, and a character I’d never seen before looked after the final three cars. Mr Rose and Don seemed to know the fellow and called him Bert. Each ride lasted between three and four minutes, and it only took about two minutes to empty and refill all the cars. The fair was open from 6pm till 11pm. Do the maths! That is something like sixty rides per night. There were nine cars on the Waltzer, and each car could seat six people, everyone knew that the cars spun faster and longer if full to capacity so most of the times the cars were full. Maths again: 3240 people could ride the Walzter in one night. Each punter was paying 6d, so the showman could take over £80 in a night. That doesn’t sound a lot in 2013, but this was the 1950s; in today’s money that equates to approximately £3,900...and all of that was in cash!

  At the end of the night Don and I carried the bin to Mr Rose’s living wagon and he took it inside to count. We headed back to the trucks to get our heads down.

  On Friday there wasn’t a great deal to do until we opened at 6pm, so I mooched around and did a few odd jobs until Don asked me to give him a hand with something. He led the way back to Mr Rose’s living wagon, went inside and came out clutching a large key. With this, he opened a significant looking padlock on the steel- banded wooden box, which was bolted to the belly of the wagon between the two axles.

  ‘Watch that a moment, Bernie’ he said before re-entering the wagon, emerging a moment later clutching a large and heavy duty looking canvas sack. As he struggled to the edge of the steps with it, he grunted,

  ‘C’mon, grab the bloody thing, will you
’, I took the sack from him and damn near dropped it! It must have weighed about sixty pounds so clearly it was full of metal.

  ‘Bugger me, Don,’ I exclaimed, staggering backwards, ‘what the hell is in this thing?’

  ‘About seventy quid in silver,’ he replied, ‘chuck it in the belly box and come back for the other one.’

  Luckily, I only had to take one step to get the sack into the box between the axles, and when I turned back Don handed me another sack, this one slightly smaller and lighter. I loaded this one into the box and arranged them so that the door would close, as I turned back to ask Don for the padlock I found myself staring deep into the limpid brown eyes of a large and toothy dog of dubious ancestry. It didn’t snarl at me or bark but its gaze was quite disconcerting.

  ‘Bernie, meet the Princess’ said Don, who was holding the dog’s collar

  ‘Princess, say hello to Bernie’

  I tentatively held my hand out for her to sniff, which she did. No tongues were involved and Don said,

  ‘That’s good, she didn’t have your hand off, mind you, once she‘s on the chain, and especially after dark, don’t go anywhere near her, she’ll sink her teeth in and not let go for at least half an hour...at least that’s what she did to the last bloke who got too close!’

  With that, he clipped a length of stout chain about ten feet long to her collar, the other end he secured to the hasp of the padlock, which he used to secure the belly box.

  ‘There you are, safer’n any bank’

  Friday night at the fair was the same as Thursday, but just a bit more frenetic. For some punters it was the end of their working week and the first evening after pay-day, so there were more of them at the fair and they were letting their hair down a bit more. I was more relaxed that night as I’d had my baptism of fire and so now felt more like a seasoned showman’s “chap” and less like an impostor. However, the fatigue was catching up and so, when the lights started to turn off and the last of the punters drifted away, I was really looking forward to hauling the bin of money to Mr Rose’s van and hitting the proverbial hay.