Tuesday 6th September - all the fun of the fair

On Tuesday, Wimble took me to the fair. St. Giles' Fair to be precise, which is traditionally held in Oxford town centre in the beginning of September.

Anyway, the whole thing is really rather cool, with some of the cities' streets closed to traffic, and filled instead with a noisy, tacky assortment of thrill & fairground rides, food vendors and side stalls.

After perusing the rides on offer, Wimble and I started rather conservatively with a slide down a traditional helter skelter. Things got progressively more stomach-churning, with a stint on my personal childhood favourite, the Twister.



Despite being scared of heights, I insisted on going on one of the vertical drop rides.



I managed to take one photo of the view from half way up (or half way down, depending on your perspective), before I gave up on the amateur photography, and concentrated instead on alternating between involuntarily screaming, and apologising profusely to Wimble for the screaming. Poor man...



By the end, Wimble had decided maybe free-fall wasn't his thing... so we decided to chill out a little (with a ride on the dodgems), and discuss the implausibly high chav count.

Ride-wise, we probably saved the best 'til last. Step forward, The Booster.

Boasting the highest ticket price, and the longest queue, this ride looked truly terrifying. One long arm, with spinning seats at either end, this thing soared into the night sky, and when running, was the source of the loudest screams. Christ... the people at the top were screaming when it was stationary, and they were loading the bottom seats!

I haven't uploaded the quicktime movie I shot - when safely back on the ground (mostly 'cause I don't know if anyone will care enough to download the 11 MB file) - but it was 45 seconds of pure, unadulterated terror... compounded by the close proximity of the downward spin to the top of a neighbouring building. I hadn't had a rush like that since I went skydiving... Wimble, however, may have been less impressed...

Anyway, you can view the manufacturers' (strangely silent) mpeg here (Wimble, this may bring back some bad memories!!)

Anyway, although I thought I'd already OD'd on junk food, the evening was perfected with the purchase of a bag of marshmallow kebabs to eat on the bus ride home.

Thanks again, Wimble ;-)