(by Paul Fitzpatrick)

When I was a kid, I loved going to the Carnival at the Kelvin Hall at Xmas, there was just something magical about it – it was a full out attack on the senses.

First there was the noise – chart hits being pumped out from every attraction, plus the accompanying sirens, bells and whistles and of course the whoops and screams from the punters.

Then there were the smells – everything from the sweet smell of freshly spun candy floss to the not so sweet, throat-gagging, odour of elephant dung from the neighbouring circus.

And finally, the lights – bright, flashing, colourful, a bit like Vegas, it could have been any time of the day in there, you’d never know.

It was an alternative universe we visited once or twice a year and it never disappointed.

You could spend hours there just soaking it all up but normally it only took 60-90 minutes to spend whatever money you had. Frittering away your last few pennies in the penny-falls machine in the vain hope of extending your stay.
Frustratingly, walking away on the brink of a big pay-out with an avalanche of two pence’s hanging over the edge!

Then there were the rides.

We all had our favourites and our strategies to make the most of them.

For me the Waltzers were always number one especially if the ‘Waltzer guys’ aided the experience by manually spinning the contraption around. This however, was a fete normally reserved for the young ladies they were looking to impress.

It was quite a dance, watching them weave their way effortlessly around the heavy duty machinery, snake like, waltzer to waltzer whilst eyeing up the talent.

We may have been young and daft but we spotted this pretty quickly and employed a tactic where we would split up into pairs before joining the two most eligible girls we could find that had space in their Waltzer.
We’d done our research and we knew with some certainty, that this particular Waltzer was going to get hurled around the West End of Glasgow something rotten.

The girls were normally a couple of years older and were oblivious to us or our rouse, totally swept up in the attention of the Waltzer Guys and the fact that their chosen chariot of metal was about to spin off its axis into the Clyde.

It was a tactic that served us well always maximising our Waltzer experience.

Another top ride was the Rotor, a concept based on centrifugal force, pressing you against the cylinder wall of the ride, as the floor below disappears.

Rotating at dizzying speeds, you were literally stuck to the wall like an insect to flypaper until the giant Nutri-Bullet came to a stop and the floor re-emerged.

Being Glasgow of course, there were plenty of gallus punters who didn’t respect the laws of Newtonian Mechanics, so you had guys doing hand stands against the wall, people trying to consume fizzy drinks and worst of all, numpties jumping on the ride after scoffing a baked potato or a burger.

The result was nearly always the same and I can confirm that a combination of centrifugal force and vomit is not pleasant for anyone involved.

Think Problem Child 2 for any of you that have seen it!

Everyone had their favourites – the ghost train, the dodgems, the rib-tickler, the cyclone and the chairoplanes to name a few but apart from the odd scramble for a specific dodgem that you were convinced was faster than the rest, I don’t seem to remember ever having to wait long to get on a ride.
Certainly none of this 30-minute waiting time malarkey that you see now.

Then there were the salon games you were encouraged to play, the challenges that always looked relatively easy, with the impressively unattainable prizes stacked behind them as an incentive.

Throw a small hoop over an ever so slightly larger plinth and win a diamond ring, throw rock-hard table-tennis balls into a jam jar and win a Rolex, knock the superglued coconuts off their shy with a foam ball and win a holiday to Vegas! …..(okay I’m taking it too far now!)

I can also confirm that taking Goldie the goldfish onto the rotor wasn’t the best idea.

Then there was the penny arcade with its plethora of slot machines, that split into two types.
None of them rewarding….

Ones where you could win cash prizes (like the fruit machines or penny-falls) but never did.

In saying that we never went out with the intention of coming back with anything substantial, and we knew that any money won was just going to be ploughed straight back into the place anyway.

Every ride pumped out music at maximum volume and the better the song the more enjoyable the ride, the song that reminds me most of the Kelvin Hall is Shaft by Isaac Hayes, a perfect soundtrack for the time.

‘Who’s the cat who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about?’
Shaft!

‘Right on’

I remember going to the circus a couple of times as well, but that was usually a trip with the Cubs and the only reason for going was the 30 minutes you’d get to go on the rides afterwards.

I’d left the Kelvin Hall behind by 1974 and had moved onto the big-boy rides at Blackpool’s pleasure beach – namely The Grand National and The Big Dipper.

Then when our own kids were old enough we went to Disneyland and Universal’s Island of Adventure in Orlando and of course pretended it was for the kids benefit.

The rides and the entertainment in Florida are on a different level of course – The Hulk Coaster, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror, etc but for all the razzmatazz I’m still not sure anything compares with the Waltzer at the Kelvin Hall on a cold December night with two bonnie lassies onboard and an amorous Waltzer guy – geien it laldy!