On Saturday, it was the 4th Worcester Park Scout Group summer fete. As you may recall, I’d gone to their Christmas fair a while ago, and as it was such a nice sunny day, I thought I’d pop along:
I paid my 50p entrance fee and was given a programme. On the back, there was a picture of a pirate which you could colour in. I might scan it and hold another colouring in competition like this one I ran a couple of years ago.
Whereas the Christmas fair is held inside the scout hut, the summer fete takes advantage of the small field at the back. This means they can offer some larger scale attractions than the Christmas fair; although they still had the Money Tree:
The Money Tree consists of a giant board with a picture of a tree painted on it; within the “leaves” of this tree are hundreds of holes, each filled with a plastic tube (the tubes themselves were those black plastic canisters you used to get 35mm film in). You pay 30p and pick a tube. Some of them contain a coloured dot, most don’t. If you find a coloured dot, you win a prize. The little shit in front of me, not more that six years old, won a fiver. I didn’t find a dot in my tube. Fortunately, there is a“prize every time” and so, despite not finding a coloured dot, I was allowed to choose between a strawberry chew or 2p. I chose the strawberry chew.
Also, I was again disappointed not to find a Bat-The-Rat stall. I’m beginning to wonder if I have batted my last rat.
The activities at the summer fete mainly seem aimed at people who like throwing or kicking or launching through some other mechanism things at or into other things.
There was a hoopla stall (where you have to throw a small rubber ring onto an upright wooden post in order to win a prize); a crockery smash (where you throw lumps of wood at some crockery for no reason other than it’s fun to smash stuff); a thing where you throw small balls into some buckets; a thing where you throw darts at playing cards; a thing where you try to score a goal against a middle-aged man who has kindly sacrificed his Saturday afternoon to have children kick footballs at him; a thing where you fire a bow and arrow at a target and who cares if there’s a prize or not, you’ve got a bow and arrow. Every possible combination of things being fired at other things was catered for. If you like throwing stuff, you’ve come to the right place.
It turns out that, actually, I’m not that keen on throwing stuff.
I wandered around for a bit. I had a beer and some chips. There was a singer, but she mainly performed quite slow ballads which didn’t fit in with the mood of the day (“And tell me, does she kiss, like I used to kiss you? Does it feel the same, when she calls your name?” This is not party music). After a while, I left. I bumped into my sister as I was leaving. She was going to the fete with her partner and their two kids. I kind of get the feeling that the summer fete was designed with young families in mind rather than thirty year old men on their own, so they probably enjoyed it more than I did.
No bet-the-rat? Are they allowed to call themselves a summer fete without?
Bat-the-rat even. sigh.
Did you know that rats can fold their skulls?
Wasn’t a proper summer fete without a torrential downpour or a localised tornado.
We always have an incomprehensible public address system announcing (I presume) what’s up next in the middle of the field…
When will my little girl realise that these people (Stall Holders) are happy to crush her confidence and walk all over her aspirations? She hasn’t grasped ‘odds’…. 3 balls to knock 5 cans completely off the stand (not over, but off).
It’s heartbreaking to see her disappointed little face…. She really did want that cheaply made pink tiger that is probably stuffed with old bloodied bandages… oh well, maybe one day she’ll get to cuddle up to it if she’s lucky.
” I’m beginning to wonder if I have batted my last rat”. Brilliant.
Making a bash/bat the rat is quite straightforward. My Mum made one for our primary school fete about a quarter of a century ago. She recycled a bit of board that once had a Scalextric set mounted on it and attached a bit of old drainpipe. She was quite sneaky though and polished the inside of the drainpipe. Probably with Mr Sheen. The rat was made of that horrid itchy fake fur stuffed with old socks. It being the early to mid 80s I don’t think the charge was vast, probably five or ten pence for three attempts at striking the vermin. A Mini Milk was probably ten or twelve pence at this time. As Mini Milks now seem to be SEVENTY PENCE, I reckon you could easily charge fifty to a quid.
seventy pence for a mini milk? really? i do have to wonder whether this madness will ever end.
in my village we used to have an event called ‘strawberry teas’ which included a crockery smashing attraction. it was always excellent fun. the only other attraction i remember was ‘riding a horse’ in which one was able to ride a horse from one end of a short mud track to another, and back again. i didn’t like that at all. i did it once, but thereafter mainly just did smashing crockery and complaining that i was bored and wanted to go home and play with my transformers*. mum should have let me bring my transformers with me, but she never did.
* actually, i didn’t have any transformers. i had a solitary ‘go-bot’. this is still a source of some bitterness.. i specifically asked my parents for a transformer. go-bots were shit. i used to** just lie to people and say i had transformers so they didn’t take the piss.
** i still tell this lie. some memories are just too painful.
We have Wack-A-Mole here in America. We also have a slam a frog jump thingie. You aim a metal device at a moving target lillypad and sit a rubber frog on your metal device and take a mallet and slam behind the frog and send it hurling at the lilly pad. Kids love to slam mallets & hammers and cause loud sounds and chaos when they are able. My own son 10 has taken to yelping lately.