Barbeque Season

Every conversation I had has started with the exclamation ‘hot isn’t it?’. And indeed it has been roasting, so much so that it’s pretty much all you can think about. Oddly, it’s been nicer out than in, with the ocassional breeze to keep the air moving. So the weekend was nice, but sitting sweating in the office today was hard going.

I went to a barbeque in the weekend - it seemed like pretty much everyone else had had the same idea - which was nice. With most of the attendees being students, I somehow ended up in the position of alpha male - in charge of lighting and cooking on the barbeque. This really isn’t difficult - the only tricky bit is convincing everyone else that, five minutes after having lit the firelighters, the barbeque really hasn’t ‘gone out’ and that it will be half an hour before they can begin to start putting any burgers on.

On Sunday I went again to the Carter’s Steam Fair, which was in a park nearby. It’s a really charming Victorian-age steam-powered funfair, which apparently is the result of one man’s passion for collecting vintage fairground rides. You can see some of my photos over on Flickr. Rides include a great set of dodgems, where the guy in the booth plays original 45′ rock’n'roll records, a helter skelter, a set of steam-powered ‘yaughts’ - a kind of old version of the modern swinging pirate ship, plus the scary-looking ‘dive bomber’. Most of the rides are either powered directly by steam, or by electricity generated by steam, and either play old records or have old-fashioned music organs.

The fair travels around London and Berkshire, and is really worth checking out if it’s coming near you. The rides are fun for all ages, and you can buy genuine dairy icecream, candyfloss and doughnuts, as well as playing in the penny arcade.

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