That £25 note hovering over people’s heads shows that there are prizes to be won. In the background is St Nicholas Church, and to the left A-Plan Insurance, and to the right the County Hall.

This fair goes back centuries. The annual Michaelmas fair originated out of the annual Hiring Fair or Mop Fair (a Mop was a hat used to advertise your trade: a shepherd might have strands of wool in his Mop, a ploughman some straw, an accountant a £25 note).

Lights dance across the face of the County Hall. Before even that great ediface was constructed the fair existed.

People came to the Hiring fair to find work or get their wages set for the coming year. The Statute of Labourers in 1381 set the process going. The black death had seen many people lost from the labour market. Wages for fit and healthy workers began to rise sharply. So a law was enacted to allow wages to be set at a reasonable level and help protect the land owners from galloping wage inflation.

Beneath the County Hall are the bright lights.

Fairs remained much the same until the mid-19th century saw the introduction of mechanisation and steam-powered rides. The fairs became increasingly a chance to have a good time.

In 1868 a chap called Hatfield described a hiring fair as: “an open space crowded with … booths, stalls, swings, roundabouts, wheels of fortune, shooting galleries, photographic tents, panoramas, weighing machines, hawkers, cheap Jacks, beggars, ginger beer vendors, ballad singers, quacks, fiddlers, brass instrument players, policemen, thieves, unfortunates…”

The Carousel would be recognisable to Hatfield, although he might be a little suprised by sudden bumps or the speed of some of today’s rides, or how they hang you upside down for ages so you get disorietated and start to feel sick.

Tonight’s fair started well enough but by 8.30 it was beginning to drizzle, and anybody who stayed out much past that got drenched. Lets hope tomorrow will be even better. The showman shouted ‘Come on Scream!’ not Stream!!!