Ghost trains and thrill rides

7 o'clock? It's been at least a week or so since my alarm has gone off before 7 o'clock. My eyes felt glued shut. It took around five minutes to fully open them thanks to the sleep that had encrusted them. That, along with the lingering cold that's been hanging over me for the past few days, made it a slow struggle to get out of bed.
Unfortunately, after a semi failed trip to York last week and a weekend of entertaining it was time to get back to work and the great uncertainty that is the S&UN office.
Our niece, Morgan slept over on the Saturday night, once more demoting me to the living room couch to spend my Saturday night trying to get to sleep there with only my heavy cold for comfort and the clicking of the fridge, echoing from the kitchen. After an hour of Playstation 3, which I had switched on once the girls had gone off to bed, my head was buzzing with buggies and racing trucks and it took me at least an hour to fall asleep on my makeshift bed which consisted of a dusty quilt and a sleeping bag thrown over the, usually comfy, couch.
Ka, Morgan and myself had spent the afternoon at the Glasgow Irn Bru Carnival in the SECC.
We arrived early afternoon, after hearing all sorts of horror stories of hour long waiting times for the rides, and took advantage of it's quieter hours. Colin and Jillian had waited around an hour and a half to get on the ghost train the last time they were there, so we were determined to beat the crowds. We collected our entrance ticket and vouchers at the front counter after waiting only a few minutes in the short queue, half an hour after the Carnival's doors had opened. We then handed the entrance ticket over, received an inky stamp on the back of the hand and walked through the doors into the barrage of noise and colour that is the Carnival. The large, gloomy SECC hall was lit and full of life, echoing with noises, voices, and music of all descriptions as lights of all shapes, sizes and colours, whizzed, spun, beamed, circled and shot around us.
As the three of us tentatively walked out into the hall we looked around. It was all too familiar and as I remembered the last time I'd been there, many moons ago, I realised just how familiar. In fact, it had barely changed at all. I'm not sure what I'd been expecting. Most of the same rides even occupied the exact same space they had been in those ten years ago. You'd think they could at least shuffle some of the rides about, from year to year, to make it seem vaguely different. In fact, the only thing missing was the Pirate ship at the SECC's front doors, that swung you back and forth, back and forth, until you felt like puking the van chips up. It must have sunk somewhere at some point in the past ten years.
"Right, first things first" I said, or half shouted, over the noise. "The Ghost train!".
The ghost train was Morgan's number one priority and probably the main reason we were there in the first place. This was probably due to her various trips to Disneyland, and experiencing their brilliant haunted houses.
However, as we all know, the SECC is no Disney theme park. I didn't really have the heart to tell our niece that the ghost train on the back of a lorry, parked in one of the SECC's giant, grey, barn like halls, was not going to have quite the same level of effects and frights as one of Disney's fantastic eye rolling, wall moving, hologram projecting, animatronic zombified, skeleton mirrored, fireplace swivelling, Haunted Houses.
As it turned out, they didn't allow three in a car, so Ka and Morgan braved the ghost train alone. Apparently halfway through the ghost train Morgan politely requested Auntie Ka to stop screaming which was surprising to hear as Ka emerged from the other end of the Ghost train, looking thoroughly unimpressed. We then hit the dodgems, the Dragon rollercoaster and the Bingo. Yep, Morgan was keen on the bingo so we all took our positions around the bingo stall, admiring the very unfabulous prizes on offer, and got ready to mark off the numbers on our chosen machines. Just as the Bingo man began his monotone garble there was a 'hello' from behind us.
One of Morgan's school friends was in with his Mum and Dad who started chatting away. I nodded politely and turned to mark off my first number. Since both Morgan and Ka turned to chat there wasn't really a need for me to make small talk. The bingo had started. Who decides to interrupt someone just as they're about to hear their first number in a game of bingo? It's just downright rude. There were prizes at stake! That Gillette grooming set had my name on it.
I angrily stood up, off my stool, and shouted, "Leave us alone, can't you see we're playing bingo?!".
Obviously, that didn't happen and, unfortunately, I didn't win anything. As for Ka and Morgan, we'll never know if they won anything as they missed their first few numbers, thanks to the pesky, interrupting parents.
Following this we tried a few of the game stalls which are just a waste of time. You may as well just empty your wallet out on to the gypsy stall worker's lap.
Knocking over weighted bottles, hooking moving dogs with no prize token inside them and trying to catapult rubber frogs on to moving lilly pads, were all attempted and left us cheated out of vouchers. Morgan did manage to win herself a balloon at the hook a dog stall before we headed home though which she was more than happy with.
It was just before 5 and walking out into the bright light of the SECC's main hallway, we passed the massive queue at the carnival entrance. I silently wished the suckers luck with their future wait at the ghost train.
On the way home we stopped by the shops.
"Have you seen this?" I asked our wee niece, picking a copy of the colourfully, animated, 'Despicable Me' up from the sale shelf which stood alongside the checkout. A wee movie that would have been perfect to entertain our wee seven year old niece on a Saturday night, I thought. And only £4. Bargain.
Disappointingly, Morgan nodded confirming she had already seen it.
"What about this?" I asked her, seeing another attractively priced DVD. 'Hop'. Another computer generated animation, this one based around some sort of wise cracking Easter bunny.
"Yep, I went to see that with Uncle Colin" Morgan nodded again. I muttered some abuse at Colin under my breath.
"What about this?" I asked pulling another bargain from the shelf. Morgan frowned, puzzling over the dark DVD cover.
"Schindler's List?" Ka glowered at me, from further up the checkout.
"£4!" I insisted. "Bargain. Classic movie!". The woman putting her shopping through the checkout before us, lifted an eyebrow at me.
‘Schindler's List’ is a brilliant movie. In fact it's one of my Mum's favourite movies. She remembers ‘Schindler's List’ with fond memories.
One night, over dinner, she insisted that we'd all gone to see it as a family, during our two week holiday in Orlando, and everyone in the audience had stood up, cheered and clapped at the end.
I'm not sure where Mum went to see it, but we certainly weren't with her. I suspect she may have inadvertently stumbled into a BNP conference somewhere.
Surprisingly enough, as it turned out, Mum was actually getting some memories mixed up. The film we went to see, as a family, in Orlando, was, in fact, 'Jurassic Park'. Not the story of a German businessman that, through the need for employees in his factories, saved the lives of a thousand Polish Jews during the holocaust of the Second World War but the big effects-laden, Speilberg dino flick.
Taking a break from the thrill rides and ghost trains of Disneyland, back in 1993, the family took a trip to the cinema and watched that year's big Dino release with an American audience. It was the first time I'd sat in a cinema audience that actually made noise during the viewing of a movie. I'll always remember the moment the Tyrannosaurus Rex leaned down and looked through the window of the car as I nearly jumped out of my skin. Not because of the scary eyeball I was seeing before me, but because of the girl that was sitting behind us whose scream echoed over the volume of the tropical storm and the grunting dinosaur. The american audience screamed, gasped and cheered during the movie, something completely unexperienced to the Reids at that time.
As was the silence of the audience I remember seeing Schindler's List with. Indeed it is a classic movie, though perhaps not quite suitable for a seven year old looking to be entertained on a Saturday night.
We settled for Ice Age 2 instead.