Fairground attraction

My favourite band of all time featuring the  remarkable Eddie Reader and I had the great fortune to see her live in Lancaster a couple of years ago. The song Perfect was the soundtrack to my year working in Tenerife in the 1980s and brings back happy memories.

When it comes to fairgrounds, I was lucky enough to have an Auntie who worked for The Pleasure Beach when I was young. A visit to Blackpool was always made special if she happened to be working as cashier on The Grand National roller coaster. We would be able to stay on for a few rides without paying - always a bonus.

The traditional fairground would roll onto a local field and spend several days setting up before opening to the public. A night at the fair was always exciting. Boys in denim would spin the Waltzer carriages  with the shout of "scream if you want to go faster."

There were always stalls offering prizes for success at games like 'hook a duck', rifle ranges or the strangest of all, 'throw a ping-pong ball into a bowl'.  For some reason, I was particularly adept at that one and would walk home with the obligatory goldfish in a flimsy polythene bag with string handles. there would be a flurry of activity at home to secure  a suitable receptacle, followed by a trip to the pet shop to buy food, plant life and a proper fish bowl only to find the poor creature floating on top of the water a couple of days later.

Depending on which parent did the disposal, there was either a funeral, (usually with Mum) or a quick toilet flush, (with Dad). That's life I suppose.

The Big One

Up and up and up we go,
Buckled tightly in seats.
We reach the top and tip over,
There's a fabulous view of the beach.
We're taking a ride on The Big One.
Get set for a speedy drop.
Our stomachs are churning -
Our faces are burning.
Oh God - can you make this thing stop?

Adele V Robinson

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Comedy - You should have been there.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you quite literally had to hold your sides, you were laughing so hard?  One of those hysterical moments.  You know what I mean. The spontaneous outbreaks of funny, when someone else just didn't get the joke and that makes it even funnier. Ever tried explaining what you are laughing at, while your body is still racked with uncontrollable laughter?  Infectious too.  Raucous laughter spreads through a group like wildfire, even though many still may not know what they are laughing at.

Laughter is good for you.  Comedy is essential to life. It has always been so and always will. However, what we are supposed to laugh at has often been prescribed by governments in an attempt to curtail descent, prejudice and social injustice. Society changes and humour does too.  During my degree course, a mixed age group of students were shown a clip from, "Till death do us Part", a very popular sitcom in Britain from 1965 to 1975. I had only sat through the first few minutes as a young teenager and found the racist humour repulsive but even I was not prepared for the response of the younger students in the group. They were horrified.

Little Ronnie Corbett died this week, his partner in comedy Ronnie Barker having shuffled off  to Buffalo in 2005. The two met in a pub one day and just clicked.  Some of their 'Two Ronnies' sketches were the funniest moments I ever had watching TV.  I still can't go into a hardware shop without asking for 'four candles'.  Everyone knows and remembers that particular gag. I wonder what  magic made them work so well together. Perhaps they just had Funny Bones.

In 1995, there was great excitement here in Blackpool.  A movie was being filmed and many local people were recruited as extras to record scenes around the town. In the film, which wasn't a huge box office draw, the main character, Tommy Fawkes wants to be a successful comedian but his Las Vegas debut is a failure. He goes back to Blackpool, where his father, also a comedian started and where he spent the summers of his childhood. He starts to search for a partner, to form a double act. Scenes were filmed at The Pleasure Beach and St Anne's Pier. Jerry Lewis was here and my father's favourite actress, Lesley Caron. Dad was in his late seventies at the time but went as an extra.  The crew fell in love with Dad, asked him to do several more scenes and invited him to view the rushes. Dad had Funny Bones.

I have met many professional comedians.  Off stage, many of them try too hard.  They just can't help trying to be funny all the time. My Dad was just a natural.  I hope that I can do his wonderful sense of humour justice by telling you a true story.  First you need a little background: my Mum lost the hearing in her left ear when she was in her thirties. I am the youngest of four. I was having a party to celebrate my engagement.  All the family were gathered with their wives and husbands around a large table, drinking and sharing stories. Mum never got a joke, in fact there had already been a few funny tales that evening and she just smiled politely.

I asked Dad, "How is it that Mum is so naïve and yet she has had four children?"  At this point, everyone leaned in a little closer: at least everyone did except Mum. Dad looked around the room very dramatically, raised one eyebrow, leaned forward and stated plainly. "Well she is deaf in one ear." Well we all knew that, so I asked, "Well, what has that got to do with it?" "Ah," he said, "well, we used to get into bed at night and I would say to her, 'Are we going to sleep or what?' Your mother always said  -What?"

Mum hadn't heard what was being said, because she is deaf in one ear, so she leaned her head into the group and simply said, "What?" The overspill lasted for the rest of the evening and has to go down as one of my happiest moments of all time: all the family splitting our sides until it hurt. For 52 years, my Mum was my Dad's accidental 'straight man.'  He was still charming nurses with his humour at 83 the day before he died.  Mum has some very funny moments even now at 95, always unexpected and spontaneous. And she doesn't even know she's funny.

The best comedy is the stuff you don't see coming.

Funny Bones

What makes a comedian funny?

What makes us giggle and gaff?

A tickling stick and sticky up hair

or a magic trick that is certain to fail

by a man in fez who says,“Just like that”?

I am sure they all have funny bones

that make everybody laugh.

It might be an ostrich attached to your legs;

a phoney French voice and accent,

a clown in a beret and over-long coat,

who's a slapstick disaster at every stroke,

The phrase “Oooo Betty” brought tears to our eyes.

I am sure that these people have funny bones

that make us heave and choke.  

He’s fallen down into the bar again.

We’ve seen it a hundred times.

His comedy timing’s so perfect,

It could be considered a crime

but Batman and Robin are on the case.

I am sure that they both have funny bones,

to help them deliver the lines.  

When inflicting hysterical outbursts

of spontaneous comedy,

perhaps we should have them hospitalised,
so we can dissect them to see.

Or we could have them analysed – psychiatrically.

I am sure that x-ray will certainly

prove conclusively,

that funny people have funny bones -

and that makes comedy.

 

Thanks for reading.  Have a funny week.  Adele.

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Train keeps rolling - its a genetic circuitry thing.

I am having a hectic week.  You know how it goes, a million and one things to do and really not much time to write. I drive everywhere these days and find it the easiest way to get through all my nipping about jobs.  But I sometimes wish I still had the daily hour twice a day commute. Sitting on a comfy seat, with a table, a pen and my notebook in front of me.  Then I would find time to write.

I think my first idea of a train was from a nightly game with my elder sister.  She would send me off to sleep on the Beebo train.  She made all the sounds, chug-chug, whistle blowing, "all aboard" and steam, chuff-chuffs. My imagination carried me away and I know it worked because I never reached the destination.  At least not awake.

My brothers had a vast train set in the loft above my father's office.  It ran all round a large oil tank on a flat board. I was not allowed to play.  I would sneak up and into another section of the huge space, open my sister's ballet costume trunk and dress up.  The boys wouldn't realise that I was there and I was quite often shut in the dark when they left. By the age of six,  a correlation between darkness and trains became indelibly inked on my brain.

At eleven, my dance partner and I won a place in a British team dancing in Switzerland. My sister accompanied me as chaperone and hairdresser. We set off to catch the night sleeper to Southampton from Lime Street, Liverpool.  It was so exciting to sleep in a bunk on a train. It also felt very strange waking up in a siding.  I had thought that the train ran all night.  I still associated trains with darkness.

No surprise then, that encountering the Ghost Train at Blackpool Pleasure Beach for the first time - I felt no fear. I rode it several times, to the consternation of my youngest brother, who was doing his best to scare me. No by then I liked the dark and trains.

My son loved Thomas The Tank Engine. He would read the stories and rewind the videos to favourite parts over and over again. When I was researching the Psychology of Communication Disorders for my degree, I discovered that people on the autistic spectrum often gravitate towards trains because they behave predictably.  Electrical circuitry is the same.  Lots of straight, logical pathways.  He took to electrical work immediately, having tried mechanical engineering first. He isn't autistic but there may be a link? Both my brothers worked as electro-technical engineers. Perhaps it begins with a genetic attraction to trains. 

I decided that WH Auden should deliver the poem this week.  His is an interesting train ride.


Permanent Way 

Self-drivers may curse their luck,

Stuck on new- fangled rails,

But the good old train will jog,

To the dogma of its rails, 

And steam so straight ahead,

That I cannot be led astray

By tempting scenes which occur

Along any permanent way. 

Intriguing dales escape

Into hills of the shape I like,

Though were I actually put,

Where a foot-path leaves the pike

 

For some steep romantic spot,

I should ask what chance there is

Of at least a ten-dollar cheque

Or a family peck of a kiss: 

But forcibly held to my tracks,

I can safely relax and dream

Of a love and a livelihood

To fit that wood or stream; 

And what could be greater fun,

Once one had chosen and paid,

Than the inexpensive delight

Of a choice one might have made? 

W.H Auden.

Thanks for reading.  Adele

                                                                                                          

                                                                                                          

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