The Show Must Go On

by Bernard Ross

  On Saturday we opened at midday and ran till eleven at night; a shift of eleven solid hours of thundering music, flashing lights, screaming girls, posing men, physical effort, mental concentration, fighting for balance and working at speed. Throughout the entire shift the only breaks were a couple of hurried breaks to ease the pressure on my bladder, there was no time to eat or take a tea break. Even these “comfort breaks” were fraught with danger. The fair was laid out almost as an arena, with the smaller stalls, hoopla, duck fishing and suchlike, in a tightly packed ring facing inwards. Inside this cordon were the main rides, the Waltzers, Dodgems, Gallopers and Skid. Outside were the roaring generators and the living wagons, each with their own protective “Princess” standing a toothy vigil. If you needed a pee, there was no way you could quickly nip out of the fairground to relieve yourself behind a tree. There was only one place where privacy was assured and no one would object; beneath the deck of the ride you were working on. The cars of the Waltzer stood on an undulating and rotating platform that turned on bogey wheels on a circular runner that was itself on top of a circular frame. To reach this platform the punters climbed five steps to a height of about five feet above the ground level. Our “loo” so to speak, during the show, was the dead space below this platform. If you were really quick you may be able to go ‘between’ rides, whilst the platform was stationary, in reality you were almost always crouched beneath the moving platform as it rotated at a rate of about 18 revolutions per minute, bucking up and down amid the rumble of wheels, the creaking of stressed timbers and the flashing lights. The relief of emptying your straining bladder was tempered by the knowledge that as you pee’d your head was only an inch or so away from several tons of equipment moving at approximately the speed of a six-scoring cricket bat.

  By ten my head was pounding fit to burst and so I was really looking forward with anticipation to collapsing in a heap after the end of the show.

  Then it dawned on me.

  Saturday night, the same night of the week that I’d first got involved with Don and Mr Rose.

  Pull down night!

  As the punters drifted away I helped Don and Bert to carry the immensely heavy cash bin to Mr Rose’s van. He told us that he’d count up and get our pay ready for us as soon as the tallies were all in. With that it was back to the ride and start to pull the whole lot down.

  As we got to the last jobs of pulling down, I noticed that Bert was conspicuous by his absence; I just assumed that he was skiving and I commented on this to Don as we struggled to tighten the final tie-down rope. As Don completed the ‘lorry-driver’s hitch’ he said over his shoulder,

  ‘Oh, no, “Scarpering Bert” is well known for this. You probably won’t see him for months now, but he’ll turn up somewhere’

  ‘Isn’t he going to miss his wages though?’ I asked

  Don finished tying off the running end of the lashing and turned to me with a grin,

  ‘No, Uncle Hammerton’ll split Bert’s share between you and me and Bert won’t expect a penny.’

  I was stunned!

  ‘What? You mean he did all that work for love?’

  Don shook his head and smiling, said,

  ‘Bernie, you’re such a fucking innocent! Bert makes all the money he wants on ‘the turnover’, then he scarpers before anyone takes him to task for being such a bloody tealeaf.’

  ‘What’s ‘the turnover’? ‘ I asked

  ‘That, my friend is the next lesson!’ said Don, ‘Meanwhile, it’s time to go and relieve Uncle H of some money.

  At six thirty on Sunday morning, I collapsed in a virtual coma of fatigue and slept until midday.

  We had a lie in that Sunday as we were only moving eleven miles to the next fair!

  Chapter 6

  The University of the Tober

  Here in the 21st Century, much is now being made of the value of learning on-the-job. Back in 1958 there was no such thing as a college based National Vocational Qualification in Dodgems or a Bachelor of Science degree in Funfair Logistics; everything was learned on-the-job, by experience and osmosis. Life has turned full circle.

  And there was a heck of a lot to learn.

  Doctors use their own ‘jargon’ as do market traders and pretty much every other trade or profession. The travelling funfair community is no exception. Much of the necessary theoretical knowledge was gleaned from conversations with Don and Charlie, in the summer evenings, around the ‘yog’; ‘yog’ is the travelling patois for a fire. Not any, or every, old fire. Specifically what might be thought of as a ‘camp-fire’. So, in the evenings, we would often sit around a wood fire, on the ground outside the wagons, the fire acting as a focal point for the group. Conversations could be small, individual affairs or whole group activities.

  Sitting around the yog, I learned lots of the terminology that the funfair people used; a man was often addressed to as ‘mush’, pronounced like ‘bush’ rather than ‘gush’.

  A woman might be referred to, behind her back or in conversation, as ‘a mossy’....but not to her face.

  A child was often referred to as ‘a chavvy’, which may explain the modern pejorative of ‘Chav’ for a certain class of person.

  When someone wanted to describe a lack of something the term was ‘nanty’, if you wanted to say you had no money it would be ‘nanty money’ or ‘nanty cash’

  Fairground customers were ‘punters’; a term that is now widespread.

  People who lived in bricks-and-mortar houses were ‘flatties”, the funfair itself, was known as the ‘gaff’ and the men like me, who worked on the funfair, but were not ‘Showmen’, were ‘gaff-lads’.

  Being on-the-road was referred to as being ‘on the tober’, so for the Showmen, their families and gaff-lads they were on the tober throughout the summer when the funfairs were active on village greens and town grounds across the country. The origin of the word ‘tober’ is uncertain but is believed to actually be Gaelic; historically in England, highwaymen were referred to as ‘tobymen’ and the road (at a time when going on the road was a major adventure for most people), was referred to as the ‘high toby’.

  ‘Trashed’ was another term that was in common usage, but very different to its meaning today. Nowadays if you say that something is ‘trashed’ it is damaged or destroyed. A person is ‘trashed’ if he or she is drunk. But back on the tober, a gaff-lad would use trashed to mean scared or frightened; so a punter who was afraid on the ride was described as ‘trashed to death’, another word with a meaning that is odd to our modern ears was ‘chat’; whereas now one might say ‘Pass me that thingamajig’, or “Where has the bloody watchamacallit gone?”, back in the gaff we’d have called ‘Oi, chuck us over that chat will you?’. It meant something the name of which you couldn’t remember in a hurry.

  Whilst much of this slang originated in the Romany Gypsy community, the travelling showmen were not Gypsies and many a fight was started in the pubs of the towns we visited by an uninitiated person calling a showman a ‘Gyppo.’

  I learned that, though I might have thought of myself as a ‘showman’, this was actually a proper title, and one to which I could lay no claim, nor really any aspiration. A Showman was a member of the Showman’s Guild. To become a member of the Guild you pretty much had to be born to it, flatties were only accepted in the most unusual of circumstances. You couldn’t own a ride and run it for the paying public unless you were a paid up member of that Guild. All of this kept the funfair fraternity tight and restricted, and maintained the centuries old traditions and the sense of community.

  Many of the things I had taken for granted about the funfair were in fact false. For example, I had presumed that a funfair was, in itself, a whole entity, but it wasn’t. Individual rides and machines belonged to different Showmen, sometimes they travelled and appeared together and sometimes they didn’t. Many families consisted
of several independent related Showmen, and separating didn’t mean there was a rift in the family, any more than travelling together meant that the family was particularly close. Mr Rose and Mr Charles were prime examples of this; sometimes they would remain together for weeks and sometimes they separated and went off to run their individual rides in different parts of the country. Old Mrs Rose always stayed with Mr Charles and his wife Anne.

  I also discovered that, though a circus has one big tent and everyone mucks in together to work for the community, in a funfair the individual ride owners take responsibility for their own setting up and pulling down. There was some support and assistance giving for the occasional widow who continued to manage a late husband’s business, but these were rare and in most cases only ‘side stuff’. ‘Side stuff’ was the collection of little stalls such as rifle ranges, hook-a-duck, darts and hooplas that did not have large and complex machinery.

  Don and Charlie also taught me some of the ‘tricks of the trade’ and many of these were to do with money.

  Back in the 1950s most people were still paid in cash, and weekly, so many men (and most of the workforce, and therefore the wage earners in the 50s, were still men) carried the bulk of their wages with them. Much of this cash was in coinage and it is quite possible that you, dear reader, are not old enough to remember the type of coinage that we had in the UK in the 1950s, here is a small lesson in coin.

  The average person earned £13/2/11per week. That is thirteen pounds, two shillings and eleven pence. A pound was divided into twenty shillings and each shilling was twelve pennies. A shilling was often referred to as a ‘bob’, so two bob was two shillings and ten bob was ten shillings or half of one pound. There was also a ‘crown’ which was five shillings (a bit like the American concept of the ‘quarter dollar’) and a ‘half crown’ or ‘half-a-crown’ which was two shillings and six pence). Half a shilling was six pennies and was called a ‘tanner’. Pennies were further subdivided into half pennies, commonly referred to as ‘ha’pennies’ and quarter pennies, called ‘farthings’. The farthing was on its way out but was still in usage at the time. That is the general layout; so what of the actual coins themselves?

  Starting at the bottom you had the farthing, ha’penny and penny. Then, moving up, you had a three penny coin, normally referred to as a ‘thru’penny bit’, the six penny coin; the ‘tanner’, and a shilling. Going higher you had a ‘florin’, which was two shillings, and the half crown.

  Technically speaking, you then had a crown of five shillings, a half-sovereign coin worth ten shillings and a sovereign coin worth one pound. But these coins were made of solid silver (in the case of the crown) and 22 carat gold (in the cases of the half sovereign and the sovereign) this meant that their intrinsic value was far more than their face value, so they weren’t used as currency.

  Ten shillings was a note, as was a pound.

  As you can see, the money was, in comparison to modern coinage, dizzyingly complex. It was also quite bulky and quite heavy....for example, a thru’penny bit was similar in size and thickness to a modern pound coin (although it had twelve sides) and there were eighty of these in a pound!

  Before we move back to the fairground it is worth mentioning the differences in the coins in general. Brass coins, of lower value, had a smooth edge, much as the penny and the two penny coins in circulation today. Silver coins (from the tanner up to the half crown) all had milled edges, with little lateral grooves in them. This helped you to identify, by feel, the difference between, say, a half crown and a penny, although they were of similar size, (in fact there is only a millimetre difference in circumference). This may seem a semantic point to be making, but trust me, the importance of this will become clear shortly.

  When we were taking money on the Waltzer, Mr Rose sat in the pay booth and watched the nine cars like a hawk with eyes in the back of its head. He mentally calculated the expected income for each car on each ride and as the lads brought in the moneys from the punters he checked that he was getting the right amount and gave out the appropriate change. The lads then manoeuvred back to their cars to hand over the change and spin the cars as fast as possible. It was during these last two actions that two of the most common tricks took place.

  You will recall that back when I was fitting hundreds of light bulbs Don was tasked with fitting the ‘blocks’ on the cars. These blocks sat beneath the seat of the car and ensured a small gap of about half an inch between the rear of the leather seat itself and the curved, upright, leather-covered padding of the seat back. This gap served two functions; one more legitimate than the other. For the average punter, a trip to the funfair was a big night out, they would probably have supper before they came then they would fill up on toffee apples, peanuts, candyfloss, popcorn, and fizzy pop. The grown-ups may have been to the pub as well. Remember that most people didn’t own a car and few had ever been in an aeroplane. Now, with a stomach full of early junk food and liquid, they then added the violent motion of the Skid, the Ark, the Gallopers, the Dodgems and the Waltzer. Quite a few people would throw up, some made it off the ride, but some, inevitably, didn’t. The gap allowed any sick to be wiped quickly out of sight under the seat to be cleaned up properly when the fair closed down for the night, or, more likely, the next day.

  Oh, the glamour of my new life!

  The second function of the gap between the seat and the seatback was more nefarious.

  For security, most men kept their money in their trouser hip pockets. When standing up, the pocket opening is vertical, but when seated, the opening is horizontal, allowing the pocket’s contents to more easily spill out. These were the days when most men didn’t wear their trousers skin tight, and the less voluminous patch pockets of denim jeans were still uncommon. The punters wanted the most exciting ride possible, which meant spinning the cars as fast as we could for maximum white knuckle effect.

  The faster the car spun the greater centrifugal force pushing the coins in men’s pockets backwards towards the open tops. Once the money was thrown clear of the pocket, it only had to travel a matter of a couple of inches before it reached the small, block-induced gap, down which it could disappear. If a punter thought he felt some change leaving, he would look at the seat, see nothing and assume that it was simply the effect of the spinning, bucking and jarring but that he hadn’t actually lost anything.

  When the fair closed, we would lift the seats and check underneath, on a ‘good’ day we could actually net ten to twelve shillings each from our three cars. Granted the money was often plastered with half-digested food, but, as they say, ‘Where there’s muck, there’s brass’.

  The second ‘trick’ was somewhat less innocent and considerably more illegal. It also required a considerable degree of skill born of practice. This was the ‘turnover’.

  Picture the scene, you have taken a seat with your friends and one of you has produced, let’s say, a ten shilling note to pay for four people. At a tanner a head that equates to two shillings, so, even if you are drunk, you have probably already worked out that you expect eight shillings in change. The gaff-lad takes your ten bob note and moves to the next car, where he takes money from one, two or three people, before moving to the next car and repeating the process. By now, the ride has started, the machine is in motion and as the lad passes your car, on his way to the pay box, he gives you cheery greeting and a huge spin. You are whizzing around, lurching up and down and rotating around the pay box. The lights are flashing and the music is thumping out, you and your friends are having a great time. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, the gaff-lad appears and dextrously counts out your change in front of you into his left hand. As he reaches the count of the expected eight shillings, he grabs your hand with his now empty right hand and upends his left hand, with all the recently counted change, into your palm, curling your fingers helpfully around your change to save it from flying off in all directions due to the violent movement of the rid
e. You thank him, and at the earliest opportunity, raise your bum off the seat and shove the handful of change deep into your pocket.

  What you didn’t see was that as he turned his hand over to put the money into your open palm, he trapped a coin between his fingers, preventing it from falling into your hand. As your hand was already full of change you didn’t feel anything untoward either. As soon as he had given you your change, he disappeared from view to return change to other punters, probably your next door neighbours or workmates, before the short ride finished and the whole process started again.

  A competent gaff-lad could tell, by feel, the value of the different coins. This wasn’t the mark of a crook and he wasn’t alone in this skill, clippies on the buses, market traders and cinema cigarette sales girls all relied, more or less, on their sense of feel as much as their sense of sight to speedily find the correct change, in order to serve more customers, more quickly.

  Consider the maths of the number of times a gaff lad had to hand out change in a night; an average night might be sixty rides, with three cars to a ride per lad, that makes one hundred and eight cars, each of up to six people. Most people were either couples or families, so the ‘normal’ payment was for three riders. About a third didn’t need change, so two thirds did. That equates to between two hundred and two hundred and forty transactions requiring change per night. You could only really pull off the turnover if the punter paid with a ten-shilling note, any less and the change would be too significantly light to get away with. If only twenty percent of rides were paid for with a ten shilling note that makes a potential of forty eight hits a night. The ‘easiest’ coin to palm, due to its size, was the half-crown; two shillings and six pence. Forty-eight of them makes six pounds a night. The fair was open Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so in those three days, a dodgy gaff-lad could make eighteen pounds a week on the turnover alone. The average weekly wage was around fourteen pounds a week and a gaff-lad’s weekly wage was five pounds all in.