White knuckle

At odds with the lyric in that Stranglers' song, the clouds are interesting here today (and not just in Sweden). From my study I have been watching various showers and other meteoroligical phenomena chasing each other across the sea. I can also see the Palace Pier and its various "rides". On a day like this I wonder why anyone would want to have themselves hurled about and blood draining levels of "g" inflicted upon themselves. As I contemplated that big arm that spins round in a vertical plane with a pod full of nausea at each end I found myself thinking about my first trip on a big wheel. When I was about 5 or 6 I lived in Glasgow. Around Chirstmas time there would be a fair and circus at the Kelvin Hall, maybe there still is. Only recently did I realize that that absolute temperature scale and the conference venue were linked. Lord Kelvin must have been quite someone, scientist, businessman, benefactor and so on. Anyway, his hall is big enough to fit a fair and a circus in it at the same time. The only problem with this event was that my mother would try to persuade my brother and me to have a sleep in the afternoon so we had enough energy to stay up late; this, in my opinion was not a successful strategy and inevitably lead to angst. The best example of this was in 1974 when we had a holiday in Ibiza; there was to be a firework display in the town which would be visible from our apartment roof. I was ten and my brother seven, as the pyratechnics would be happening later than we would usually go to bed, we were despatched for one of those (albeit rare) afternoon naps which, in this particular intance, I remember escalating into a great deal of waling and gnashing of teeth. Later I met a girl from the next door apartment who had been waterskiing earlier in the day. When I asked her "how was your water-ski"? She replied to my utter embarrassment, "how was your sleep?" Anyway, back in the Kelvin Hall and this particular year the clowns, the undoubted highlight of the whole show, arrived with a car which they drove about the ring and sytematically destroyed. Entertainment that for this young person, could not be improved upon. Consequently, every subsequent visit to a circus anywhere was a disappointment as there was never another vehicle. I am not sure if it was the clown car year, but I agreed on one occasion, to go on the big wheel with my Dad, actually, I must have persuaded him to take me on it as I don't reckon he was that excited about it himself. Up until then, the most daring thing I had attempted had been the all too ephemeral experience of a ride down the helter skelter sitting in a folded-up front door mat; ten seconds wondering if the end was just round the corner, and then a grazed leg. Not brilliant compared with the likes of "Oblivion" at Alton Towers or better still the roller coaster that is entwined around and through the New York New York Hotel in Las Vegas (properly violent). So, once on board the big wheel, despite the fact that is was relatively slow, indoors and not in a force ten gale, I buried my face in my dad's tweedy coat and cried the entire time.