The man in the silver Rover

A strange encounter at the fair

 

The bonfire fair at Campbell Park in Milton Keynes came to a close on Sunday, and as is traditional I paid a visit yesterday to watch the showmen pull down their equipment and depart from the ground. There is a culture of mutual respect between showmen and funfair enthusiasts so the latter are to be expected and are generally welcomed as long as they don't cause trouble. The enthusiast community is very small and tight-knit so we are often known to each other and to many showmen, but I had a rather strange encounter yesterday with someone I had never seen before who didn't really seem to have a genuine reason to be there and was basically being a nuisance: the mysterious man in the silver Rover. Who was he and what was he doing there?



He arrived on the ground mid-morning in an old Rover 600, and I knew he wasn't a showman as this is not the sort of car they would own. A middle-aged chap, probably in his forties or fifties, he looked quite unfit and not the usual type of person who would be doing the very physical job of working on the fair. He didn't have a camera so he clearly wasn't an enthusiast either, but he was there for several hours and seemed to spend most of that time either sat in his car or driving around the park getting in people's way.

He did speak to myself and a fellow enthusiast, and claimed he worked for the lessee of the event (who he did at least know by name) but had an injured shoulder that prevented him from actually doing any work, in which case there was surely no point in him being there. However, in all the time he was there I never saw him speak to the lessee and he didn't get involved with the team of men pulling down the lessee's rides. Further evidence of him not actually being part of the fair came when he asked my friend what his job at the event was, and seemed puzzled by his reply that photographing fairground equipment was his hobby. All of the fairground workers I've spoken to are familiar with the enthusiast community and are used to seeing photographers at pull-downs.

None of the showmen or gaff lads seemed to recognise him and he didn't make much effort to speak to them, suggesting he wasn't known to them, and he didn't show any knowledge of the fair, such as the names of the rides or their owners. Having claimed to be a worker, at one point he was given a mains cable to roll up and pack away, but didn't seem to have a clue what it was or what to do with it, and just stood like a lemon holding it until he could give it to someone else. Surely anyone who has ever worked on a fair would know how to do that simple job.

Whenever a load was being moved, the silver Rover always seemed to be in the way, and he was constantly moving it from one place to another. If he was involved with the fair, he should have known there would be large loads on the move and he needed to park his car well away from them, but he seemed determined to leave it where it would cause the maximum inconvenience. Eventually he was told to leave by an irate showman fed up of him constantly getting in the way, and the man in the silver Rover departed, leaving everyone wondering who he was and what he was doing there.

So who is the man in the silver Rover? Although rather annoying and clueless he seemed harmless enough. Was he deluded and making up a fantasy of life on the fair? Was he trying to make some form of bizarre protest against the fair? Did he want to work on the fair but get turned down? Who knows? His presence at Campbell Park yesterday will probably forever remain an enigma.