Saturday 11 September 2010

--FAIR GAME--

The last weekend of the summer holidays I went with my family to the West End Fair in Esher, Surrey. It's near where my grandparents used to live, and we've been going there for years. It's just your typical English country fair: there's an amateur dog show, old-school fairground rides, childrens' races, a break-the-china stall, second hand books, a tent with the flower and vegetable competition entries...And food stalls with produce from the local pick-your-own-produce farm. It really was the most amazing photo opportunity ever-and sadly, because I am really unassertive with strangers, and didn't want to look like some stalker just randomly taking photos everywhere, I didn't come away with many. Maybe next year...


The best thing, which I definitely didn't take photos of because I'd have looked like a paedo, was the game depicted in the absolutely amazing drawing above. (I'm unable to sufficiently explain it in words). You can see that I chose music over art for GCSE, can't you...Basically you take turns throwing a ball at a target attached to the end of a pole. If you knock the target back, the clip holding the horizontal lever down flicks back, and the seat at the other end falls down, precipitating the unwary Girl Guide into the water. Biggest lol to watch ever. I actually scraped in one year, a very long time ago, and took my turn falling into the water...(Looking back, I'm not actually sure how that happened. I've never been a Girl Guide in my life). Apparently the whole thing was made by a local engineer who built it for fun in his free time but is actually fairly eminent, as engineers go...






This was really cool. In the tents, along with the fruit and vegetable competitions, they have all these other random arty ones. Someone had made a whole, life-size model out of old toys.



This guy was the biggest legend ever. He saw me taking pictures and was like, "I'm available for portraits if you want...". Of course I was unable to turn down such an offer, and he obligingly stuck his thumbs up without being asked, instantly winning my eternal affection as this is probably my favourite photo pose of all time. (Followed closely by the amazingly witty 'hold both forefingers and thumbs at right angles on either side of open mouth to create the word 'LOL'). And then we had chats about the clown profession and all in all it was pretty damn cool. I love it when you strike up random conversations with strangers like that; usually I'm quite a sensible person (i.e. fairly reserved) so don't go in for that sort of thing.


(own photos and drawing (!)-please credit)

2 comments:

Rebecca Maureen said...

hahahaha, omg fell out of my chair. hilarious. p.s. I often look like a crazy person w/ my camera but so goes it. I have stopped caring. Worse, I don't want to buy the nice foreign mags so in bookstores when I'm reading, I'll take a picture of the page instead of buying the magazine and then find the picture online later. I'm sure no one working there enjoys that, haha.

Romany said...

Hahaha omg I love the drawing! Classic.
Aww this seems like such fun. Dammit I wish I lived in England, already!
Romany
xx
p.s. ah yes, perhaps it's best if you give Blue Velvet a miss. Definitely not for the faint-hearted. Glad you enjoyed Catcher in the Rye, that's really all that matters. :)