"The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

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alabamared

Stuart Pearce
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

It’s still rock and roll to me.

I'll set 'em up you knock 'em down!
 

Buckaroo

axe to grind
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

"The smell of diesel generators and sweet candyfloss". I felt like a kid at Goose Fair again for a moment there...
 

alabamared

Stuart Pearce
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

I left Acton Road just before my 6th birthday. I remember 'Toni Bell' ice cream vans parked at the end of the road. It was a Cul de sac back in those days. There was a mushroom farm opposite and a slaughter house too. There were two 'new build' houses halfway along Acton rd, one those was my house. I remember once when a cow escaped from the slaughter house and trampled over my dads roses on the front garden. Also near where the ice cream vans were parked there used to be a very small 'National' petrol station. My dad would always buy his petrol from there.

The older guys at Pressac used to tell the story about the escaped bull, must have been quite bizarre. I know the new build house you refer to, there actually some quite nice houses on Acton Road. I have an aerial photo of the area from the 1940s and what you remember as the mushroom farm was a Pig Farm back in those days and the bulk of what now is the industrial estate was allotments.
 

Rockabilly

GAFF LAD. "Open your knees and feel the breeze"
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

Spot on :LOL:

I think I might have told it elsewhere in the past

But you’ll never hear under the moon of love in the same way again.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

:LOL:
 

Rockabilly

GAFF LAD. "Open your knees and feel the breeze"
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

In Ashby where I work the locals call the fair which occurs in September the 'stachits', that's just slang for the Statutes fair. These fairs started as a means of hiring labour after the black death reduced the amount of labour significantly in 1351.
Not sure when the waltzers were added!

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

Aye... Ashby Statutes, every September. It was Pat Collins Fun Fair.
 

Otis Redding

Try A Little Tenderness
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

Sorry Bryn I forgot to mention the word 'wakes' come from when the factories closed for their annual holidays. The fairs would often turn up on 'Wakes week'.

Basford Wakes on Lincoln Street was a popular event during '50s/60s as I recall Gary.
 

Rockabilly

GAFF LAD. "Open your knees and feel the breeze"
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

Basford Wakes on Lincoln Street was a popular event during '50s/60s as I recall Gary.

It was Armstrong's Fun Fairs that attended Basford wakes Frank. Also there used to be a one or two 'Showmen's yards' in Basford. They would park all their equipment and stay in these yards over the winter period.
 

Redemption

Weepy gripe baby 👶
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

Basford Wakes on Lincoln Street was a popular event during '50s/60s as I recall Gary.

My year as a kid was defined by fairs

Baseford Wakes in May.

Skeggy/Mabbo in Aug, even if it was just the Daytrip to Mabbo organised by Freddie's nan.

Redhill fete.

Goose Fair.

Loved them all.

I was addicted to being dizzy.
 

Rockabilly

GAFF LAD. "Open your knees and feel the breeze"
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

My year as a kid was defined by fairs

Baseford Wakes in May.

Skeggy/Mabbo in Aug, even if it was just the Daytrip to Mabbo organised by Freddie's nan.

Redhill fete.

Goose Fair.

Loved them all.

The Helter Skelter that stood at Mablethorpe for many a year, would be dismantled at the end of summer then taken over to the Goose fair.
 

Carlos

Massive Member
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

They still do park up in Basford with the kit and there's an old boy that lives there throughout.
 

Captain Sinister

Senior doom Monger
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

I edited ians wiki and spoke to his sister after so my uncle was not forgotten. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Paice

My uncle didn't have the greatest life and died of liver failure after years of alcoholism, I made sure his name would be remembered somewhere.

I still to this day have respect for Ian and his family for recognising him.

If I recall correctly, didn't Paice's gran live on Priory road in Gedling?
If it wasn't his gran, it was his aunt.
An old school friend lived next door (terraced houses) and said he always wondered who was banging on the drums in the next door house, and eventually he found out it was Paice.
It would be good to know my mate was telling me the truth all those years ago!
 

Captain Sinister

Senior doom Monger
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

Rock: this is one amazing thread.
You really lived the dream... most of us probably had the dream but life got in the way and stopped us living our dream.
Can the next chapter have some really juicy/sleazey bits please?
 

Rockabilly

GAFF LAD. "Open your knees and feel the breeze"
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

Rock: this is one amazing thread.
You really lived the dream... most of us probably had the dream but life got in the way and stopped us living our dream.
Can the next chapter have some really juicy/sleazey bits please?

Thanks Captain, much appreciated :cheers:


You mean Juicy/sleazy, like the night I popped my cherry on the floor of a grubby caravan? ;)
 

alabamared

Stuart Pearce
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

My year as a kid was defined by fairs

Baseford Wakes in May.

Skeggy/Mabbo in Aug, even if it was just the Daytrip to Mabbo organised by Freddie's nan.

Redhill fete.

Goose Fair.

Loved them all.

I was addicted to being dizzy.

Basford Wakes was always the week after Goose Fair in October, being a Basford child it was the highlight of my year. There was much more relaxed atmosphere and less people.

I think Hucknall had a fair in May.

Basford Wakes was always on Billy Bacon's feild back in the day.
 

Rockabilly

GAFF LAD. "Open your knees and feel the breeze"
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

Basford Wakes was always the week after Goose Fair in October, being a Basford child it was the highlight of my year. There was much more relaxed atmosphere and less people.

I think Hucknall had a fair in May.

Basford Wakes was always on Billy Bacon's feild back in the day.

Back in the 1980s there was a fair on Nabbs Lane? Hucknall. We used to attend James Mellor's fair in a field opposite the 'Blue Boar' pub on a August bank holiday.
 

Redemption

Weepy gripe baby 👶
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

Basford Wakes was always the week after Goose Fair in October, being a Basford child it was the highlight of my year. There was much more relaxed atmosphere and less people.

I think Hucknall had a fair in May.

Basford Wakes was always on Billy Bacon's feild back in the day.

Yes, you're right.

I'm not doubting this for one moment, but it's locked-in to my mind along with Whit week for some reason. Funny how the mind works.

I'll ask my mam about the May one - but I still have this massive strong memory of Maypole up at New Basford Social and it being connected with Wakes Week. The Fire Station is in that memory too!
 
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Carlos

Massive Member
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

Yes, you're right.

I'm not doubting this for one moment, but it's locked-in to my mind along with Whit week for some reason. Funny how the mind works.

I'll ask my mam about the May one - but I still have this massive strong memory of Maypole up at New Basford Social and it being connected with Wakes Week. The Fire Station is in that memory too!
My old allotment overlooked where the wakes used to be
 

Rockabilly

GAFF LAD. "Open your knees and feel the breeze"
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

Chapter three. "Bedroom Fun"

Back in those days as a young teenager I couldn't afford a camera. There were no such things as mobile phones in those days.

When the fair was closed, i spent many hours roaming around the rides, the stalls and the transport too, looking at the patterns, colours and of course the lettering.
Because I had no camera, I would often turn up with a box of crayons and a drawing pad. I'd try and copy every colour, every style, every slogan I could lay my eyes on. I remember thinking to my self "I'll be as good as this one day". To me, fairground art was better than anything I'd seen in art galleries. To be honest... nobody gave a 5hite about all the hours and processes that it took to produce these wonderful masterpieces.

One day on the way home from my paper round, i bought some humbrol enamel paints, the kind that were used for Airfix model kits. As time went on, my crayon work was something I was getting very proud of. This is when I unleashed myself on my enamel paints in my BEDROOM! My mum went spare at first, then she spotted my work and was secretly impressed.

I spent hours and hours up in my bedroom marking out lettering on thick card, then filling them in with the enamel paint. As always I'd do my designs to the sound of my vinyl records. I had an old Dansette that had a pole in the middle so I could stack a load of 45s on all at once. They each in turn would drop down one at a time as they played. I was as happy as a pig in poo. Painting fairground art/lettering whilst listening to the sounds of fairground in my bedroom.

When I was 14yrs old, my mum said her local pub wanted some small signs painting for the carpark. My first ever paid job! I did more signs for the pub, advertising bar snacks and such like. More paid work! One of the chaps that owned a garden nursery who frequented the pub, asked my mum to get me to pop over to his nursery. "READY NOW BEDDING PLANTS" that's what I painted on a massive board. I was chuffed to bits with my sign as it stood in the entrance to the nursery.

During the winter months I was going to watch Forest with my dad, both home and away.
If we couldn't attend, I'd be painting more fairground signs in my bedroom whilst listening to the match on the radio. Every piece of fairground art I painted i'd save. By now I had a large porrtfolio of artwork.

A few years later (I was nearly sixteen) Forest reached the League cup final against Liverpool. Me, my dad and my brother got our tickets and we were making the trip in my dad's car. A couple of days before the final... I was up in the bedroom painting slogans on bits of card ready to stick on the inside of the car window. I painted one for the rear window, it read "Don't
Follow us... Follow Forest!" I also painted a bed sheet for the final, I stapled it onto two large poles. The banner read "Bionic Forest Are Magic!"

During the summer and the winter of 1977, It felt like I was in mass painting production... and I was loving every minute of it!
 
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Carlos

Massive Member
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

"bedroom fun"

You absolute tease Rocka
 

Rockabilly

GAFF LAD. "Open your knees and feel the breeze"
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

"bedroom fun"

You absolute tease Rocka

:LOL: Gotcha! :congored:
 

Captain Sinister

Senior doom Monger
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

The old Dansette... I had one as well.
Stack 45's - mostly ex-juke box too, only mine were from Selectadisc down Arkwright Street - and then get annoyed because at the wrong moment one would drop and would skid rather than turn.
One of the few singles i bought "brand new" was Je t'aime... mois non plus.
As a spotty 15 year old I was brave enough to go into Simon's record shop on Main Road in Gedling, and bravely asked the counter lady for it, in rather hushed tones.
"We,ve got 2 versions" she said "which do you want?"
" the one by Serge Gainsburgh and Jane Birkin" I meekly answered, in even quieter tones.
To my horror a couple of women came in at that moment; women from our estate.
Loudly the lady behind the counter said (so the whole shop could hear) " Oh, you want the mucky one by Serge Gainsborough and Jane Birkin do you?"
Then to the 2 ladies recently entered she said "He wants the mucky one by Serge Gainsborough and JANE Birkin... you know the one where she has an o-r-g-a-s-m (spelled out)".
I laugh now when i think about it, but JHC, I was mortified at the time... almost as bad as going to buy my first pack of johnnies!
 

Viktor

Bee Gees Fan Club member #00001
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

The old Dansette... I had one as well.
Stack 45's - mostly ex-juke box too, only mine were from Selectadisc down Arkwright Street - and then get annoyed because at the wrong moment one would drop and would skid rather than turn.
One of the few singles i bought "brand new" was Je t'aime... mois non plus.
As a spotty 15 year old I was brave enough to go into Simon's record shop on Main Road in Gedling, and bravely asked the counter lady for it, in rather hushed tones.
"We,ve got 2 versions" she said "which do you want?"
" the one by Serge Gainsburgh and Jane Birkin" I meekly answered, in even quieter tones.
To my horror a couple of women came in at that moment; women from our estate.
Loudly the lady behind the counter said (so the whole shop could hear) " Oh, you want the mucky one by Serge Gainsborough and Jane Birkin do you?"
Then to the 2 ladies recently entered she said "He wants the mucky one by Serge Gainsborough and JANE Birkin... you know the one where she has an o-r-g-a-s-m (spelled out)".
I laugh now when i think about it, but JHC, I was mortified at the time... almost as bad as going to buy my first pack of johnnies!
I'm buying this asap
 
Re: "The Tunnel of Love" My life on the Traveling Fairgrounds, by rockabilly.

Great stuff, rocka. Bet you know Malc Allured too?
 
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