‘It’s hard to put make-up on such an, um, lived-in face,” says my new friend, Otto, as he rubs some class of industrial-strength foundation over my haggard head. I think about giving this clown a punch in the face.
If someone unexpectedly called you in the dead of winter offering you the chance to run away and join the circus and work as a “carnie” – that’s a carnival worker to anyone unschooled in the arcane ways of the fun fair – what would you say?
Yes, me too. And that is why I find myself in Funderland being gently insulted by a clown.
Funderland has been a post-Christmas tradition in Ireland since the first Ferris wheel went up in the RDS 41 years ago. Since last year it has become a pre-Christmas one too. While the machines get bigger and brasher with the passage of time, some things about Ireland’s largest fun fair are timeless.
Like the candyfloss stall. This is where my hard day’s night begins. I’d imagined getting thin pink strands of spun sugar from a big metal drum on to a thin wooden stick to be a simple task. I was wrong.
You have to move the stick clockwise around the perimeter of the drum, twisting it quickly between your fingers while scooping up clumps of sugary goodness. My first effort collapses as I hand it to a suddenly sad little girl. I give her the treat for free and tell her mother it’s my first one.”No. I’d never have guessed,” she says, sarcasm dripping from every word.
“You’ll get the hang of it eventually,” says my co-worker, Mairéad O’Sullivan. “It’s not so easy.” She’s just being nice; I can tell. “Working in Funderland is not like any other job,” she tells me. “You are always on the road, for a start. I’ve my little caravan out the back and I love it. The people here are my family but it is not for everyone.”
If Funderland is a family, Norman Bird is at its head. The Birds set up Funderland in the early 1970s and have grown it steadily ever since. He has been watching me giving away the candy floss and is concerned about his sugar levels dipping, so he moves me on. “I haven’t done that since I was a child,” he says. “But I reckon I was a bit better at it. I do remember you have to keep twisting the stick. Did you do that?”
I glower quietly to myself as we walk to the bumper cars. Carnies don’t like calling them bumper cars. “They are dodgems, not bumpers,” Bird tells me. “You are supposed to dodge the other cars, not crash into them.”
Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? The electrified platform the dodgems circle is 10 years old and still going strong. That’s lucky, because the system would cost €750,000to replace. The cars need to be replaced every five years or so, Bird tells me. They cost almost as much as a regular car. The Ferris wheel would set you back about €3.5 million if you wanted to put one in your back garden.
A million light bulbs
Funderland is a big business for sure. It takes 20 miles of electrical cables to power the attractions, and there are more nuts and bolts than in the Eiffel Tower. One million light bulbs spread over 13 acres illuminate the place. Fossett’s Circus has even got a Big Top here now.
But more of that later.
First I have to man the dodgems. I sit in a little kiosk with strict instructions not to allow any messing. I police the drivers with a 1950s-style microphone and four colour-coded buttons: for stopping, starting, bell ringing and slowing everyone down.
When I sense people are up to no good, I press the blue button to slow everyone down. The confusion on their faces when the power suddenly drains from their cars as they race towards victims with malice in their eyes is a delight.
Staying on top of the dodgems is easy; the waltzers are a different story. Sitting in one of the wildly spinning little capsules is terrifying. It’s more terrifying again when you’re outside the capsule.
Graham Curry, a third-generation carnie, and I start off slowly. There are a couple of dads and children on board and a group of medical professionals from a Dublin hospital. They’re here as part of a team-bonding session. I would like to spin them around and add to their thrills, but I can barely move.
“Imagine you’re surfing,” Graham tells me. I’ve only been surfing twice and nearly died both times, so I try not to imagine that. Instead I crouch low and imagine walking off the waltzer alive.
“It’ll be a couple of weeks before the waltzer’s in your legs,” Graham tells me as he shows me the door.
Gerry Curry is Graham’s dad. “I’m 66. I was born in the business and I’ll die in the business,” he tells me. “It hasn’t changed all that much since I started. The machines are easier to put up now. What we offer people is controlled fear and they love that.
“I suppose some people do get sick on the rides, especially if a fella’s had a few pints. It’s no fun cleaning it up.”
Funderland has taken to the ice recently, and its iSkate rink is the biggest in Ireland. There’s a children’s section and a proper rink for more accomplished skaters. Ridiculously, I’ve signed up as a skate marshal. Luckily it’s not busy so only a handful of people see my iShame. I skate like a baby elephant, and, mortifyingly, I need one of the baby penguins, normally reserved for toddlers, to get around the rink.
Otto’s sidekick
Like Funderland, Fossett’s Circus is an Irish institution. And the two have come together for the first time this year. Otto the Clown has agreed to let me be his sidekick; he names me Blotto. He puts on my make-up in a draughty, poorly lit trailer behind the big top while trapeze artists and jugglers limber up around us. It is ramshackle but intoxicating: and I’m Blotto, not blotto.
When my make-up is applied, he looks delighted. “You look like a proper clown,” he says. His sister, the gymnast, agrees. “You’re a real clown all right,” she says.
Otto, whose real name is Edward Fossett, talks me through our slow-mo routine. I will get to punch him in the face and kick him in the groin. Then the arse. He will stab me. I will fall to the ground. Pick up a gun and shoot him dead. Then I die.
All good, clean family fun.
It is show time. We enter stage right, screeching and dancing like loons. Normally, I’d be mortified doing this but the anonymity of the clown costume is liberating. I can act like an eejit and no one will know who I am. We do the routine. I do the slow-mo too fast but the kids still laugh. Hearing the laughter is a lovely feeling. I get a fleeting sense of what circus life at its best must be like.
We walk off. Otto tells me I did okay. That’s good enough for me. “I keep telling my dad I am going to run away and join an office,” he says as we walk to his small caravan to declown. It’d be an awful shame if he did.
