Saturday 5th October

Goose Fair was dead last night, for a Friday night this is disgusting. The people of Nottingham could have saved two pound a week per person since the Saturday after last year’s fair (13^th October 2012) and that would have given them one hundred pounds to spend over the course of the fair. Why stay away on Friday night? Maybe they’re saving it all up for Saturday, which has always been the biggest day of the fair. I still think it was a bad idea to extend the fair’s timescale; traditionally it was Thursday until Saturday night. Although Sunday is a good idea as there’s fewer people working, Wednesday is a funny day to start, although it didn’t open until half past five.

My dad recalls the Goose Fair of his youth when it was so busy that people were fighting to get on the rides. These days they are waiting to fill the rides up. The council needs to stop charging rent for the use of the forest recreation ground on the condition that prices are reduced. Nobody loses out as Goose Fair brings in tourism money (which is a good job seeing as apparently very few people from Nottingham attend) which helps the city as a whole. The prices are mainly very low; around the two pound fifty-three pound area, although the reverse bungee is now fifteen pounds. Some of the bigger rides are more expensive but still not massive. I didn’t go on the bungee today as I don’t believe that there is any justification in the price rise, it doesn’t go any higher. The best thing that can happen to ensure the future of Goose Fair is to leave them to it, no high-viz jackets, no health and safety assessments, and more traditional rides and attractions. They should also bring back the sideshows; the wall of death motorbike act was an amazing spectacle that should be enjoyed by everyone. Maybe even a boxing kangaroo with a glove on each hand (paw?) and one on its tail that people are invited to challenge. What about a bearded lady? If they don’t have any bearded ladies, all they need to do is go on a recruitment drive in Bulwell.

I have always said to people that the only way to enter Goose Fair is to approach it from Gregory Boulevard. Part of the atmosphere of the fair is the excitement of that particular approach; the stalls outside the houses selling food, toys, and little games with a prize at the end. This year there was hardly anything going on along Gregory Boulevard, which is shameful. Something needs to be done to sort this out before next year; every driveway down the boulevard from Goose Fair to the traffic lights should have a stall in.

The saving grace at Goose Fair this year is of course the mushy pea stall, by which I of course mean the mushy pea stall. I didn’t pick up a newspaper today so I don’t know if the resolving of mushy pea-gate was reported on. If it wasn’t reported in today’s paper (not that anyone reads the Saturday edition but this is an important story), then heads should roll at the office of The Nottingham Evening Post (as I still call it).  The stall was extremely busy, for which of course I take some of the credit. 

If it wasn’t for the fuss that I made about mushy pea-gate last year then the stall would be in serious trouble this year as people will have boycotted it due to their insistence on using squirty bottles. I had a little chat with the woman who served us, and she admitted that the squirty bottles were a bad idea and that the bowl and ladle belonged on the counter. It wasn’t the same person who was quite adamant that they had done the right thing last year, so maybe there had been some kind of internal row going on in the lead up to this year’s fair. The peas tasted lovely; the only stall at the fair that cook them on an open fire and don’t use tinned peas. A cup of peas is only one pound fifty, which nobody can complain about. Despite the publicity, the crowds and the general buzz that had been created, I still had to pay for my peas.

I discovered a new game this year too, the photo album is on my Facebook page, (remember Facebook? It’s making an inexplicable comeback) that you are welcome to ‘like’, please don’t throw a sheep.

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