All is fair — at least until Hull freezes over

All is fair — at least until Hull freezes over

Grin up North at Europe's biggest travelling fair

By Robert Crampton

A bracing weekend up North with my wife, children, cousin, parents, parents-in-law, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces, wife’s uncle, aunt, grandmother and cousins, plus their boyfriends, girlfriends and partners and my nephew’s girlfriend. Quite a feat of diplomacy, keeping them all happy for 48 hours.

Only my brother and his wife, who, 30 years on from the classic single, have taken the Dead Kennedys’ advice and gone on a holiday in Cambodia, are absent, and they call in via Skype from an internet café in Phnom Penh.

Bracing is the word. From getting in the car in East London to getting out of it in west Hull three and a bit hours later, the temperature drops from the pleasantly autumnal to the distinctly polar. I spend the weekend wrapped in four layers, plus scarf and hat. “Too long down South” is the inevitable indictment. We visit my wife’s Uncle Dave at his allotment to collect pumpkins. Dave snorts at my insulation. “What’re you going to do when the winter arrives?” he asks. “Easy,” I tell him, following the approved script, “I’ll just stay in and have another shandy.”

I carry the pumpkins back to the car. “Oh my God,” I tell the children, “I’ve turned into Jordan.” They roll their eyes but, honestly, if a middle-aged dad can’t make smutty, infantile jokes while clutching two pumpkins to his chest, what’s the world coming to?

Merry go round

The occasion for the trip is the biggest event in the city’s social calendar: the extraordinary 700-year-old blowout that is Hull Fair. A legacy, presumably, of the city’s history as an “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” deep-sea fishing port, Hull Fair is reputedly the biggest travelling fair in Europe. I think it can be seen from space.

Our party is 13-strong. I discover, in a pleasingly Malcolm-Gladwell-ish way, that even with my wife’s tendency to, ahem, push the norms of the democratic process to their limits, thirteen is two or three more than the maximum number a group can be while still functioning effectively as a cohesive unit. Of our three hours, we spend half standing inert, while various members of the extended family buy chips, go to the loo, bicker, wander off, and so forth.

That said, the pressure on decision-making at the fair is intense: noise; light; crowds; the competing demands of thirsty adults and howling children. We lose my dad and cousin in the mêlée, and despite them both being over 6ft, and the average Hull male standing a good bit less than that (although bolstered by his flat cap) they are nowhere to be seen. Turns out they’ve headed back to my mum’s.

Bumpy ride

My cousin’s early bath is surely connected to delayed shock. He grew up in Cambridge, and is thus both (a) a debutant at the fair and (b) a southerner. Before disappearing, he has insisted on going on The Bomber, three or four minutes of unmitigated horror at speeds up to 83mph, heights up to 170ft and G-forces up to 4.2. The rest of the party waits at the bottom of the ride expectantly.

George duly emerges, weak-kneed, white-eyed, in need of a lie down. We tell him that a few years ago, a woman fell out of a similar contraption at about 80ft, plummeting directly into its machinery. “Really?” he gasps. “Really,” we say, “and she survived, and you will, too. That’s how hard people are in Hull.”

Cheap and cheerful

No signs of green shoots at Hull Fair, incidentally. After their big drop last year, prices remain on the floor. You could pick up quality tat on Walton Street for as little as £1.

My family (just the four of us, not the thirteen) came away with two light sabres, a flashing cutlass, a fluorescent orange hat, a pair of stripy orange and black mittens, a coconut, two bags of brandy snaps and two toffee apples, plus of course the recent memory of several other tasty and nutritious snacks, plus rides undergone, Tommy guns fired, ducks hooked, helters skeltered etc, and yet still we had change from £100.

Once bitten Within the space of ten yards, the children both lose teeth to their toffee apples, the most efficient dental extractors this side of the doubled-up fishing line and the sharply slammed door. Blood in your mouth, scouring a darkened street for your own teeth, I ruffle my son’s hair and reflect that it’s good training for nights out in town when he’s a bit older.