Fairground Follies

A day of galloping around like a flea in a fit. A solitary but productive day at the office, followed by the principal fundraising night at Fairground Follies, a place which is tucked away within an industrial estate. In a nondescript warehouse building, it has a stash of what can only be considered as an eclectic array of fairground-and-anything-entertainment-related items from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There was only a small number of items from the collection on display this weekend (sadly, most of the carousels, swing boats and fairground rides weren't on show) but even so, what was there was fascinating.

For some reason, Fairground Follies seems to keep a fairly low profile, despite having a large and rather unusual collection of organs -the kind you play, not the kind you realise has been stolen from you when you wake up in a strange bathtub the morning after a party and discover a mysterious scar near where your kidney should be.

I asked a psychosis of organists (informal collective noun for people who are passionate about mechanical organs) as they would surely know about the place, in much the same way as I would ask a train spotter if I worked on a project that involved a redundant railway station. That fanatical gleam of unholy light in spotters, twitchers and all other obsessive niche groups' eyes was what I fully expected to see when I asked contacts about the fairground. Yet their eyes were blank.

But organ fetishists aside, far as everyone else in the venue was concerned the main attraction was the Victorian carousel. It didn't matter whether they were 9 or 90; they all made a beeline for it the second they were told they could have a ride. The last time I saw that many adults stampede towards something it was for free beer. Many had had a few drinks beforehand, so some people had difficulty staying on their apparently feisty steeds, while others had some novel approaches to horse riding. But all had fun.

Aside from the beautifully-maintained carousel, there were a number of other items from the collection, including:
- c.1905 Hewson's Electric Biograph (a kind of travelling picture projector)

- c.1900 Gypsy wagon

- the over-the-top Taj Mahal organ you can see in the background of this shot, which was installed in a dance hall in Belgium in 1924 (approx 8.5 metres long x 8 metres high - more info on the website if you happen to be a fetishist)

-1950s Decap Robot Orchestra (one of only two surviving), built in Antwerp and originally installed in a venue in Scotland

-art deco jazz organ