That’s Easter show business
Children. Or in my case; child. Great in small doses but the prospect of four uninterrupted days with a pre-schooler isn’t a happy one. Any parent who tells you otherwise is lying or self-medicating.
So. The wife and I took ours to the Easter Show. I love the Easter Show. It’s magnificently Auckland. Candyfloss, dodgem rides and a few token sheep that no one pays attention to.
Sheep are great with mint sauce but otherwise uninteresting. The G-Force ride, that spun you around like a trainee astronaut, was described by the 4-year-old as ‘‘intense’’. It was, as was the effort required by his ageing father in not sharing partially digested candyfloss with the other riders.
I was also on assignment for the Sunday Star-Times and won this gig because Nadine Higgins was unable to wrangle any nephews at short notice and David Slack has enough self-respect to refuse such a commission.
A key feature of fairs is allowing urchins to tear themselves ragged while their guardians sedately wait for the inevitable crash. Other than the mechanisation of some childhood entertainment with ferris wheels and vomit-inducing spinning contraptions, not much has changed over the centuries.
We’ve lost the Punch and Judy show and circus freaks but we’ve kept the laughing clown head machines and throwing games where, for a penny, you have a remote chance of winning something worth less than a farthing.
In New Zealand we’ve escaped the menace of showbags; a uniquely Australian form of Pokemon Go where kids compete with each other to collect marketing guff peddled by the likes of Cadbury and NRL teams.
I grew up in Australia and loved showbags. Many were free when I was knee-high to a bandicoot but today parents can be compelled to spend up to $30 a throw. Awful things.
Lurking behind the ignored sheep and bouncy castles is another phenomenon that I don’t recall existing back in the early 1970s when I first stumbled into such fairs: the ability of marketers to bypass parents.
It’s clever. Our lad and hundreds of others dragged their adults to see a PJ Masks show and if you are hoping I’ll be able to throw any light on who or what are PJ Masks, I’m afraid I can’t. Even after watching 20 minutes of spandexsuited bobble-headed actors I’ve no real idea what it is all about.
Somehow, through some digital sleight-of-hand an entire universe has been slipped into the minds of our children and only becomes apparent when the little person is presented with the opportunity to buy something. We’ve been raising a generation of mini-Manchurian candidates. It’s a little disturbing.
Still. Despite the rapid evolution of Auckland from a bicultural backwater to a multicultural Pacific Hub, the food and entertainment on offer remain steadfastly stodgy and Anglocentric. Everyone loves a hot-dogon-a-stick, a toffee apple and a carousel. Our lad was no different and we left the fairgrounds as the sun was setting, the teenagers were arriving and the pre-schooler was shattered.
We’ll be back next year. If only to find out what our boy has been watching on YouTube.