Captains Log: Star Date 01.04.05 Yay! The Easter Show is over! 2 weeks at a fair working around 10hr shifts a day with 2 half hour breaks (standing for all of this resulting in mega sore legs and feet), with screaming kids, pushy parents and just vast amounts of excess noise just generally around ended yesterday! : ) Working at the show has been, on the whole, such great fun! I am really glad to have done it as it is not the type of thing I will (with any luck!) ever do again, but has certainly been an invaluable experience! It has given me such an isight into the Ozzie people, who are widely perceived to be laid back and care free... well I dont know if its just at the Fair that they change, but I would have to disagree with this statement!! The sheer quantity of competitive parents, trying to get their 3yr old kid to time it right on the clowns so they get all 6's (never gonna happen!) so they can win a massive teddy is unbelieveable! So much for the "it doesn't matter if you win or lose, its taking part that counts" Not in Australia! Win win or win, they are your choices kid! It became funny, time after time when asked in an Ozzie accent that rises at the end "what do you have to do?" and the general response when told to pick something from the bottom row: "which bottom?" (yes, there was only one bottom) By the end of two weeks the response from myself was generaly, "the one at the bottom, so not the top or the middle, the bottom" Ozzie's arent very good at detecting sarcasm either! which I enjoyed exploiting at any given oppertunity! : ) There were some down points over the two weeks, Esther getting electrocuted by 247 volts when it was raining, (the rain was seeping through one of the lights which made the trailer live!) It was lucky she had rubber soled shoes on! : / Lee climbed up the back to get a big teddy down for someone and on his landing lopped off the end of his toe! He was wearng thongs (aka flip flops) and it was a pretty nasty deep gash. I saw it later that night and nearly passed out! That has never happened to me before, ever! But I got the black tunnel vision and stars in my eyes and had to sit down! I thought I was going to be sick! : ) Another unfortunate incident with Lee happened one day when it was really busy over the bank holiday weekend, and a group of 10 (adult) lebonese guys got worked up over the fact they hadn't won a big teddy (yes I am actually being deadly serious) and threatened him and were grabbing for his throat and everything! : / seriously guys, just go to a shop and buy a teddy if you want one that badly! The show got packed out over the easter weekend, over 100,000 people each day!!! It was fairly manic, I shall remain eternally perplexed at the sheer quantity of people who desire to own a massive brightly coloured teddy, that will probably take up a spare room in their house that aren't even nearly fire retardent... The amounts of money these guys must spend in a day is obscene! I gradually got more annoyed at being spoken to like something scraped off the bottom of a shoe by the locals who all assume that despite my British accent, I am a local carnie. Its strange to be the other side of discrimination like that, sometimes people don't even respond when you say hi as they walk over, they generally talk down to you and one old woman shouted at me "this games a rip off!" To which I smiled and said nothing, who's the fool? Me getting paid to take your money or you thinking you might actually win at the fair!? The next time I go to a fair, I shall be extra nice to everyone I speak to!!!! The people we were working with were all really nice and I had a really good laugh over the past 2 weeks, goofing around and getting paid for it! Don't worry mum and dad, I'm not thinking of a new career path or anything, but I am really glad to have met some really cool people that I might not have had the chance to other wise, and earnt a bit of cash in the process... One guy working at the fair responded to Esther when she asked him the time, without taking a beat, "its the time of your life and don't you forget it!" I think he might just be right! We are off out tonight to spend some of the earnings on a well earned voddy or two! : ) Over and out xxx