Fun Fair

I see the fair from the windows of the bus. Watching the town crawl by is marginally less dull than staring at the back of the seat in front of me. Marginally.

'Fun' fairs they call them; the very name seeming to convey a quiet desperation, a need to convince those who think of them that they are indeed 'fun'.

From my vantage point in the musty, still air of the coach, the fair appears anything but fun. Harsh sunlight beating down on the deserted tangle of brightly-painted steel speckled with extraneous light bulbs made clear the patches of rust, the tatty paint and the fading signs.

For a moment it seems that there could be no more pathetic sight than that of the empty, twisting helter-skelter squatting next to the tiny ferris-wheel, the closed-up stalls and tent, the small car-park now containing nothing but a uniform expanse of hot brown dust.

I turn away from the sight, and as I do so my fleeting depression slip as I think back to the times when my parents would take me to such fairs; their shabby paintwork cloaked in soothing, soft darkness, their stalls open and blazing with light as smooth-tongued carnival folk coaxed forward punters with their well-worn banter.

I remember the taste of candy-floss and toffee apples, the smell of dust and oil and people, the clamour of hundreds of exciting voices mixing into a wordless babble that nevertheless conveys a feeling of rightness, that it is good to be alive this night.

And I think, for an instant, of rising above it all at the top of the helter-skelter; gazing down upon the whorls of colour and movement and light, before lunging forward onto the slippery wood of the slide and watching the myriad of stars above dance and spin faster and faster until with a thud the throng is rejoined.

In my seat I smile as, unregarded, the fairground slides slowly away. I do not turn, for if I did I would see only the skeleton of the fair, dull and unlovely in the sunlight. Only when the night pours down and both workers and guests stream in will the bare metal bones be clad in light and music, and the fun-fair will live.