This is the Carter’s Steam Fair in Ravenscourt Park. I remember going there every year as a kid. It’s pretty much the same. The same penny arcade and coconut shy, waltzer and candy floss. They no longer have the spin-dryer ride we all loved. It was always the scariest ride they had. You would stand in a round cylinder against the wall. The cylinder would start to move. It span faster and faster, pressing us back until eventually, the floor would descend leaving us sticking against the wall, legs dangling. We felt like miniature astronauts in g-force training. When it was spinning fast enough, the more daring among us would manoeuvre themselves round so they were hanging upside down, laughing at eachother’s squashed faces upside-down.
There was a story at the time, (inevitably someone’s friend’s sister – probably just an urban legend), that a girl did the same thing, and, when the floor came back up, her hair went down the gap between the floor and the wall and was caught up in the machinery under the floor. The floor and walls kept spinning but the girl was held in place by the hair until it was eventually ripped out. Could this even have been possible, or was it simply made up to give an extra authority to the ‘no handstand’ rule? It seemed worryingly reasonable at the time – the worn paint and chipped wood didn’t exactly scream safety. Even so, we all laughed as we stepped back out into the sunshine at the end of the ride, laughing as we picked the splinters from the wooden wall out of each others’ backs.
It’s no wonder it’s not there any more.
