The Fair And The Dark

The Fair And The Dark

See the mighty waltzer as it spins around

And hear the piercing cries and screams

It’s every teenager’s great night out

Full of thrills, of hopes, of dreams

 

Watch folks emerging from the ghost train

Faces wearing masks of joy and fear

Stumbling down the exit steps

Wondering what other treats are near

 

The flashing of coloured bulbs and neon strips

Lighting up the night-time sky

The blasting and pounding of the music

As the cars go whizzing by

 

Catch the drifting smells of sizzling hot dogs

The candy-floss and buttered popcorn

The slowing of the circling wheels

Rides ended by the hooting of the horn

 

The swing-boats and the carousel

The helter-skelter and the ferris-wheel

But best of all the dodgem-cars

Dashing round on their plates of steel

 

But behind the scenes things are rather darker

Amongst the shadows where there’s little light

A different world of trucks and cables

Hidden in the foldings of the night

 

The rusting, oily lorry couplings

A glamorous world this surely ain’t

The sooty smell of burning diesel

The peeling layers of gaudy paint

 

Here the engines keep on running

The generators pumping out their smoke

Dumping out their blackened fumes

Keeping power flowing with every stroke

 

And in those hidden spaces round the back

When the teenagers collect and huddle

Where there’s no-one around to see

The occasional kiss and cuddle

 

And in the morning, when it’s all been shut down

And the heavy men knock it all apart

Collapsed and loaded on the painted lorries

The magic’s gone and they’re ready to depart

 

Only the tyre-ruts that cut into the Green

Shapes of faded, trampled grass

Betray the evidence of what was once here

But not its story, nor how it came to pass

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2022