Crazy & Co.

Sometimes It’s Not Us It’s Them, Tales Of Misadventures

19 May 2021

There are occasions when a sequence of unfortunate occurrences seem to to line up like holes in a Swiss cheese, and dump a whole load of hassle on us. However there are also occasions when we have hassle due solely to dealing with other people. Whoever coined the phrase ‘The customer is always right’ obviously never had any customers.

We are going to note just a few of the times that thing’s have gone a bit Pete Tong, without any help from us.

Educated Idiots

The first couple of tales involve what a friend of my mind refers to as educated idiots. Basically those in a position where they need to be educated, and you also assume that education correlates to intelligence.

The University Of Oxford

Now, a few years back a close friend had been contracted in to provide a Ferris wheel for a ball at one of the colleges in Oxford. His wheel was a really nice example, well decorated, plenty of lights and well maintained. William, the owner, rang me to ask if we had been paid up front for that job. As it happens we had. ‘That’s good’ he noted, ‘The Dean of the college has told me the ride is a disgrace and wants it taking away.’

I was a bit confused by this as I knew it was a good ride. William had no idea why, so I sent him to see the Dean and ask.

When he rang me back he couldn’t talk for laughing. Eventually we got to the bottom of it. Now, a Ferris wheel is constructed by building two parallel spoked wheels, and then hanging cars at the end of the spokes for the guests to sit in. William had got the two wheels constructed, but not yet fastened the cars on. It seems the Dean had looked at the ride, sans the cars, and assumed that his students would have to cling to the ride as it rotated forty feet in the air. His comment was ‘They could be killed if they fall from that height.’

The cars were pointed out to him, and he calmed down at that point so all was good.

The School Headmistress

The second case involved a primary school in Kingston Upon Hull. To set the scene I need to tell you about our first blog. We launched that in the early days of the internet, and still finding our feet about what to write, we tried all sorts of humerous posts.

On one, we had been moaning about the difficulties of securing good staff, so announced that we were going to clone Arthur. Arthur was a sort of casual business partner that was only little, and resembled a smaller version of Austin Powers.

Anyway, after a few posts on the problems with our cloning process, we proudly announced that we had succeeded and created New Arthur. This post was accompanied by a picture of the rubber goblin below.

It wasn’t quite as successful a cloning as we had hoped but we didn’t think it was bad for the first attempt. We kept the joke running all season. We pictured him holding a stick of candy floss, and remarked how well he had done. Learning to make candy floss and so on.

Now, back to the hero of our tale. We had been booked to provide a candy floss cart for a small school fayre in Hull. The headmistress rang us to apologise but she needed to cancel the booking. Now this happens occasionally so it isn’t a problem. We enquired as to the reason just so we could keep a record. ‘Well’, says she, ‘I don’t want to be rude or nasty but it’s your new staff.’

I admit to being nonplussed at this point as we had recently took a couple of kids on for some casual work, and they were doing really well, so I couldn’t understand her problem. So I asked.

Scary Staff

‘Well,’ she replies, ‘I don’t want to sound awful or anything, but we are a school for young children. I think your new staff will frighten them, he does look rather scary.’

I must admit I was still a bit non compos mentis and didn’t follow.

‘You know the one, Arthur, the one you have cloned!.

Oh FFS, she meant the rubber doll, I admit I burst out laughing at her as I thought she was playing a joke. Only she wasn’t and got rather abrupt at this point. This was in the pre Dolly the sheep days, so not only was human cloning not a thing. But we hadn’t even managed to clone any other mammals. We explained this to her, and also that even if human cloning was a thing, it would likely be beyond the finances of a small entertainments company to fund.

In the end she kept the booking, but expressed her opinion that we shouldn’t lead people on with false stories

Oh and an interesting fact, Dolly the sheep was so named, because she was cloned from a mammary gland. The scientists looking for a name, couldn’t think of a more impressive pair of mammary glands than Dolly Parton’s.

Enter The Military

We love military jobs, they usually run on time, the people are great fun and the discipline that is inherent in that world means we rarely have an issues.

One of my best event managers Ian, had taken a photo booth to a base. He rang me to say that he couldn’t take much more abuse from the Major in charge. Not a problem I told him, dismantle the booth and come home. He was worried that we wouldn’t get paid, but I told him to leave that to us. We don’t allow our staff to be abused for any amount of money.

Anyhow, we didn’t hear from him so rang to find out what he was doing.

‘Oh, it’s OK, we are best friends now.’

‘Oh, and how did you manage that.’

‘Well, I was in the toilets at the same time as he was, so I thought I would try one last time, and said OK mate. He turned looked me up and down and said what the f**k has it got to do with you. Oh, nothing, only before you go back in the party, I would wipe that cocaine powder from off your top lip, being military and all I don’t think that will go down too well’

Ian said that the guy turned up 5 minutes later with another soldier, told him that anything he needed the other guy would get for him and put it on the Majors bar tab. If you need a smoke break just close the photo booth down, whenever you want. In fact said Ian, I think if I ask for his wife for the weekend he would probably bring her over.

So no matter how hard you try. Things can trip you up through no fault of your own.

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Event Planning, Fun Story, Funfair Games

Shooting Galleries, Tips To Win At The Funfair

2 April 2021

Most people will have visited a fairground. Played on the games and lost, and been absolutely convinced the games are cons. The truth is, the vast majority aren’t. They are set up to be difficult, and favour the operator. But they are not set up as charities, the operator needs to take more than he pays out.

Bear in mind the following;

According to the National Lottery website, the odds of winning the major prizes are: Lotto jackpot: 1 in 45,057,474. EuroMillions jackpot: 1 in 139,838,160

Yet no one considers them to be con tricks.

Before we look at shooting galleries there is one thing to understand. The size of the prize on offer is directionally proportional to the difficulty of winning it. Look, if a giant teddy costs the operator £20 wholesale, he needs to earn at least £20 to cover the cost of it. But it doesn’t stop there. There is also the costs of transporting the game to the fair, insuring it, paying for it, paying the ground rent, the diesel for the power generator, ammunition for the guns, maintenance and so on. Realistically before giving out a £20 prize, I would be looking at a minimum of £100 takings to ensure I actually earn something. So if it’s £2 per game, you would expect on average to try 50 times before winning.

Pellets Or Corks

There are two main types of shooting galleries. The traditional air rifles firing pellets, and those firing corks. When it comes to corks there isn’t much help we can offer, use the gun like a shotgun, point it in the general direction and hope for the best

. There is a reason that no army in the world uses cork shaped bullets, and it’s this, corks are not aerodynamic, they start to tumble in random directions as soon as they leave the barrel of the gun. That’s why the army uses, well, bullet shaped bullets.

Now, on the pellet shooters there are some tips that can increase your chances to win, so let’s look at some of the myths you think are stopping you winning.

The Barrel Is Bent

Erm, no it really isn’t. Contrary to popular belief a bent barrel doesn’t make the gun fire somewhere different to where it is aimed. It just doesn’t fire at all as the pellet will jam in the barrel. The gun below with a bent barrel does actually fire around corners, but it a special weapon built especially to do that.

The Sights Are Off

Again no. Well, some probably are, but here is the thing. Military snipers are some of the best marksmen in the world. They spend hour upon hour firing thousands of rounds to hone their skills. They do however tend to use a personalised weapon. When they go into battle, they use the actual gun they have been practising with all this time. The reason being that guns can have minor differences in aim caused by manufacturing tolerances, scope mounts etc. The sniper will spend time zeroing in his/her weapon to their own specifications. They also tend to be set up for a particular range. What you wouldn’t expect them to do, is pick up a totally strange weapon and fire with the same accuracy.

So to win on a funfair shooter, you are going to have to do two things. The first is have more than one attempt. You will need at least one to sort the aim out.

Another major issue is that most people don’t actually know how to use the open sights on a rifle. Sure they watched all the war movies, and in their own minds they are all Carlos Hathcock, (A top US sniper in case you didn’t know, his life story can be found in this great article), but they really don’t know how to shoot. We can usually tell if a player knows how to handle a gun from his second shot. The first one might be off, but the following shots are usually on target.

Aiming Off

They do this by using a technique called aiming off. What you do is take a shot at the bullseye, or whatever the target is. You then pause to see where it has impacted. Lets say for a moment that the shot hit 5mm above where you aimed and 10mm to the right. What you would do on your following shots is aim off by the same amount, ie. aim 5mm lower and 10mm to the left. This should bring you back on target.

Using this will give you a reasonable amount of accuracy and vastly improve your chances of winning on shooting galleries.

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Fun Story, General, Uncategorised

The new blue Java Banana

12 June 2019

There’s nothing better on a hot day than a selection of fresh cold fruit especially exotic fruit. Although a cheeky pineapple and watermelon medley is about as exotic as I get, however after reading the news lately I feel pretty damn standard! There’s a new member to the exotic fruit family known as the Blue Java Banana and this is the don of the fruit market ; not only is it blue but it tastes of ice cream.

The java is said to have the same colour and consistency of a normal banana but with a unique outside skin colour of blue and a strong vanilla flavour to it. Originating from South East asia the blue banana quickly spread through continents such as North Australia, Hawaii and Central America.

So with all them places being the other side of the world to our little old United Kingdom it looks like we wont be getting to try the blue banana anytime soon however lucky for us now were in the 21^st century where we can use the internet for this sort of information.

Food Bloggers try the Java banana

An Australian food blogger videoed his first try of a blue banana described the banana taste as Phenomenal. The clip shows the blogger peeling the blue skin back to reveal a ripe mushy flesh which I can only describe as mushy sick mash potato. But according to him looks can be deceiving and after biting into the banana he described the taste as sensational adding that it was like an unbelievable taste of summer in his mouth.

The prime time to take a bite of these java’s is when they’re past the ripe stage and have gone to the next soft stage where usually you would decide to throw them away. Apparently this is when the blue banana is at its peak vanilla taste and softest texture.

Others have said the banana has a very creamy taste with a much milder flavour than your standard yellow banana. With a lighter and better texture the flavour is also a lot sweeter too and has won the hearts of many tropical fruit lovers with many being such a fan they bought java banana seeds online so they could grow their own blue banana tree at home. It is advised that when it comes to growing your own blue banana tree that Blue Java bananas like ‘warm, rich soil with high moisture’, and require a lot of fertilising and sunlight.

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