Jay Cool’s Hubby shares his impressions of Wales, in a series of daily letters to his work colleagues (now, with permission granted, shared with the world)!
Wednesday – Towyn Funfair
Buoyed up by the fact we’d survived this far, we decided to risk going to Towyn funfair this evening. We attempted to walk to it along the seawall, but before we’d even arrived, our path was blocked by a drugs deal. To be fair, they were very polite dealers, apologising for obstructing the path. Entering the fair put me in mind of entering an Al Quaeda training camp (in a movie, I hasten to add, not in real life) with sentries (lookouts) posted on all the high points.
Within moments, we walked into the same dealer selling a wrap to a kid at the other entrance to the fair. It was so obvious, even our youngest (Sprog 3) knew what was going on, and one of his lieutenants, feeling he had to say something, blurted out “Nothing illegal going on here”.
Anyway, I spent the next 3 hours watching the dealers watching me watch the dealers. Within 10 minutes, I could even tell you their car reg. One thing struck me, as I watched the pace of deals tail off – it didn’t seem a very good economic model they were operating, there seemed to be an awful lot of lookouts on the payroll. Perhaps they operate an internship, lookouts working for free in the hope of impressing the boss and working their way up the pusher ladder to a paid position.
One thing that I began to realise accounted for the inordinate number of lookouts was that the carnies themselves had posted some (Carnies – fairground workers, from ‘carnival’, I presume, although possibly from ‘carnivore’, since some of them look like they might eat you.) These two groups appeared to operate largely independently, grudgingly accepting each other’s presence, probably in the knowledge that at times they would probably end up fighting alongside one and other against a common foe – Mods, Bikers, drunken tourists.
I don’t suppose there’s much mileage in the Carnies taking on the dealers since the police obviously aren’t interested (and they probably don’t want to arrest these dealers for fear of them immediately being replaced by some less polite ones -better the devil you know.)
Anyway, great day out for the kids. Very educational.
Jed
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