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I bought a big and joined the circus.


puddlethumper

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Left Udders at 8 and got to Glasgow about 20 mins ago. Waiting in an industrial site because we can't get on site till 7.

The journey up was, erm, interesting. The side wind was bloody awful and at every gap in the greenery, a bridge or end of an embankment it was trying to chuck me into the middle lane. 

I am going to practice my Glesga accent to try and blend in. You know, gawn yersell an aw rat Jimmy and a pinta heavy.

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Last Saturday was the start of the move to Greenock. Half a dozen living vehicles and the LDV minibus. RVs' pulling trailers and caravans minibus as well. I call mine a bus because I think it sounds a bit pretentious to call it an RV. I have a friend who lives the same as I do and he's the same and he knows two others who call them  buses.  Not sure why.                     Three of us stayed up there to mark out where all the four main uprights and the poles go. I had to go to Tescos to get 2 bags of plain flour so we could drop a bit on the grass as a marker for it all. High tech, us Circus folk. Greener than a spray can I imagine and self raising was also considered inferior for this application. Distances were all done with steel wire with rings at certain points where a pin would go. A tractor unit went back down the next morning along with the minibus and then I took my designated Daf truck with a big catering unit back up.                                                                                                             The Ldv is shite, that's for certain. The drivers seat is the best* one out of the eleven in it. The back seats are fukin horrendous. So narrow and hard that a sardine would find it difficult to get comfy. It was better lying badly along three than sitting upright and 5 hours of it. The Daf plods along at a steady 90kph except on going up hill drops down to about 70kph and there are quite a few of them on the M6. On a full tank I got as far as about half way between Carlisle and Glasgow when the yellow light of came on, and stayed on. From the quarter it seemed to drop  quite quickly compared to the other three quarters. Wallet rapage time, luckily not mine, at the nearest services* which, with the needle now starting to plummet, seemed a long way away. Eventually one appeared just as I was thinking 'how am I going to tell boss fella I've run out of fuel' ? Awkward. Rolled up to the pump and stuck the nozzle in and nothing happened. Went into the shop and asked if he could turn it on. Have you got a fuel card ? says young  bloke. No says I.  Have you a bank card? I did but I said no because I don't want to pay through my account. I said, I have money. He didn't seem impressed. I wanted 100 quids worth and could give it upfront if he wanted. Upshot was, he had to call somebody to get authorisation. After waiting for matey to answer and then being told he would have to ring back I was beginning to get a bit pissed off with it so I told him I would leave the truck where it was until I got some, blocking 4 pumps. Got it in the end but I was there for twenty fukin minutes waiting. While I was on the way up one of the Peterbilt artics with the extra trailer came storming past, all lights and air horns. The Daf could only give a feeble beep in return. I reckon with me doing 56 he must have been doing 65 the way he came past and how quickly he disappeared into the distance. I was impressed. Everything was there by 4.30 am. I can see it's bloody hard work for the crew who take it all down and load it all up and luckily I don't have to. It was up a few hours later to start setting it all up again. For me this means getting water to the toilet, shower and accommodation trailers and then to the caravans, trucks and Rv's. It's a mixture of hard plastic pipe and hose pipe so quite a number of different connections. There is a general layout for everything although there are exceptions like Hudders which was a pain in the arse. The layout is 4 sides. From the front there is the entrance, toilet unit and booking office. Down the left side it's all the bigger stuff, Rvs and fifth wheelers and on the other side is mostly caravans. Back is accommodation units for crew and   performers who don't have caravans. Me and John, one of the four Irish brothers, who is showing me the ins and outs, have simplified things by making up two frames with six taps with hosepipe connections for all the living in things. There is another one in the pipeline, see what I did there, to make life even easier which I am all for. After Hudders my confidence was lessening about my ability to take over from John as he has now buggered off to do something in Irish land so I got to see one normalish set up which I think is a lot to take in when setting up for about 25/30 places. The next one in Edinburger could be interesting. I'm more confident than I was thank gawd. 

I'm going to call it a night and continue tomorrow coz the next three days are easy ones of not doing much and there will be photos this time and they will be the right way up.                                                                                                                                                                                                                

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This is a back stage view, coz I haz all areas pass, of the Brazilian bike guys getting the kit ready for the first show today. They had a front blow out on their truck on the way up which can be a trouser filling moment. Lucio did say it was a bit of a hairy moment. Totally shredded. Shows on week days start at 5 and are about 2 hours. Second starts at 7.30. On weekends first show is at 2. I'm not sure I would want to be a performer doing 10 shows a week for 5 months. 

DSC01182.JPG

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6 hours ago, jon.k said:

Cool pictures. It must be quite an experience. Are there lots of Americans working in the circus / does it have an American feel to work there or is it more a branding thing?

It certainly is an experience. I feel a bit privileged to see it from the inside, which very few people do. I also find it quite fascinating and I will be having a chat with a lovely lady about how it started, getting performers and, well, everything.          There are not a lot of Americans here. In fact none at all. It's a branding thang. 

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It's been a quiet day for me in circusland. Had to change a couple of non working cisterns in the toilet unit so it was down to Screwfix and a couple of hours work. Because there are no isolator valves I have to shut off the water and electric pump, stick a stop end on and turn everything back on because everyone here uses them. There were no stop ends on site so that was one trip into grinock .  Then another trip to get the bits, which you would think I would have got the first trip but needed an example as this unit was done at a bargain cost, nudge nudge, in Ireland and had quite a few odd bits incorporated for economic reasons and I'll be honest I don't mind bimbling about to get stuff.                                                                  As I am now senior manager in water management I have been studying the next site in Edinburgh. Looks like the hydrant is in the middle of a small parking area junction which will make things interesting and the site is 2/3 hundred metres away so I'm off to get another 50 metres of pipe tomorrow. Tomorrow is looking easy as well. Basically it's a bit full on and longish hours for four days then 3 easy ones.  As you can imagine it is its own small world/community and it's really nice because everybody says hello and sort of pass the day stuff. Learning everybody's name is bloody challenging as I've never been great at that. So far I know of seven different nationalities here but I think there are others. Found out today that the electrician is Hungarian.

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An observation on Huddersfield. If you like traffic lights you must visit as there are shitloads of the bloody things. I reckon, on average, there was one every 100m and a goodly number at 50m and of course, no coordination between any of them. If you arrived at a green it was a cause for celebration, although it was guaranteed the next one would be red. A 5 mile trip to a couple of places to get stuff took just over an hour. Dreadful !!

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The move to Edinburgh is now done. The tent is up, the water is plumbed and the electricity is doing stuff. Tent down and back up in less than 24 hours. It is definitely impressive. 

I was dragged away from my water management role yesterday to be in my other role of logistics assistant manager. This meant someone else had to take the water system to bits but unfortunately they forgot to get the standpipe and barriers so I had to get up early to bugger off back to Grinuck in my logistics role to get it. When I arrived on the scene it was as though it had been taken up as it was nowhere to be seen. First thought was some robbing bastard had nicked it but it seemed unlikely that A, they would have had a key to turn the water off B, they would nick the plastic barrier that was round it and C, they would put the plate back over the hole. So my next suspects were that the park keepers had taken it into there custody but on enquiry this was not the case either.  I was tipped off it may have been someone from the water treatment place next door so I hot footed round there to find they knew nothing about it. At this point my leads had run out so I stopped in the car park to ring the boss to tell him the bad news. He was not going to be happy. Just then one of the keepers doing some mowing came over and said he had seen a suspicious bloke in a Water board van had been seen passing the stand pipe and had stopped to look. I immediately deputised mower bloke into the team and it was back round to the dodgy water treatment plant where we grilled the bloke I'd seen earlier. He confessed to having a phone number for the miscreant, who was called and informed that the game was up and in return for the standpipe we would take no further action. 10 mins later it was in the van and off back to Edinburger, and so ends The Missing Standpipe. The first of possibly many circus detective cases. Solved.

More Circusshite to come, at some point.

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Never done set up our pull down with the circus only the fairgrounds, do they have a crew that just does that our does everybody pitch in? We did sit and watch them set up though when they shared the same pitch. I think they had their own crane too.

Going out on the piss with the acrobats then watching them in the early performance the next day was a bit of an eye opener!

Are you not running 2 trailers behind the wagons?

How are the circus kids going with school, with the show as was with  they were all home schooled and most of them seemed to have booklets and stuff to work through.

LPG - get a bottle that you can lift in and out of the 305 easily, turning it upside down will let it draw liquid, you can refill it using a £15 adaptor off eBay. Don't be seen filling a bottle though most places don't like it. You will need a POL to 8mm faro pipe and a T for the connection into the feed side.

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2 hours ago, DeanH said:

Fantastic reading. How the hell did you get involved in all this?

Pure chance. A mate with a rig like mine but slightly smaller had brake problems while up from the south on a visit so I took him to an RV mender bloke that I knew. While he was there Ivor, logistics fella, turned up with his monster RV and asked if he was interested in some driving work. My mate wasn't medically fit enough so passed Ivors number on to me. Gave him a ring and that was that. Two weeks later I was at the NEC. 

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Just got back from Dublin and I am a bit kernackered.  Stena line from Stranraer to Belfast and back. Ivor goes back to Ireland every week usually dragging a caravan that he buys. A side line to the circus. Because he is a regular he, and one other, me, can use Stena Plus, which sounds like incontinence pants, for free. Loads of freebies. As much wine as you can eat and all the snacks and coffee etc that you can get down your neck in the 2 hourish crossing. From the site next to Leopardstown race course I got a lift to Dublin airport to get a coach to Banbridge to Ivors' yard. If you ever land at Dublin and you need to travel further by bus it's a fucking nightmare getting info on where to get a bus and what time it leaves. Info board, no info about a bus towards Belfast. No info desk. Fuck all. Ended up asking a litter picker if he knew. He told me I had to use Zone 14 but he didn't know what times it went. Getting info from a cleaning bloke for gods sake.       It was quite amusing there because I was looking like a homeless bloke with my blanket roll tied up with a piece of rope, dirty work trousers, grubby sweat shirt and nearly worn out steelies. Ivor asked me if I had a passport, don't need it for the Republic. A brit driving licence is good enough. Well my ears pricked up at the mention of a passport obviously and there is a possibility of two weeks at Xmas in, wait for it, AMSTERDAM. It's not confirmed yet whether it will be there or Den Hague but either way that will do me nicely. I hope it happens because I'll be able to see some friends over there. Puddlethumper goes International, well, European for now. Next, the world. It's back to Dublin on Saturday and back to Edin on Sunday. Not sure how that's going to work as we usually start moving stuff on Saturday although  Stirling, next stop. is only an hour, so could be done. It's been tiring but tomorrow I've got a relatively easy day so I can lie in till 8/9, thank fuck. Anyway I'm loving it. Ivor offered me a park up in his Yard in N.I. at the end of the season with all amenities, and can get me a good price on ferry tickets. I've never had a look around the Republic so could be a plan as he only lives a few miles from the boarder. While I was at Ivor's yard I slept on a chaise longue. Get me ay?

That's it for now. Bed has been calling me for a while.

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