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Took a friend's dog for a walk in his localish park today, and found an "old time" type funfair. About half the rides were from the 1950's and 1960's, the rest were even older and driven by steam. They would not let me on the rides with the dog (bastards) but they did let me into the old penny arcade (machines from the 1930's to 1960's). Traded a pile of my modern English pounds for a fistful of old pennies of the type we did away with in 1971, then pissed the dog off by dragging him from machine to machine, gambolling on one arm bandits and pushers, shooting tin cats, grabbing candy in an ancient crane, seeing what the butler saw, racing tin bicycles, getting my fortune told by an automaton, and looking at genuine (genuine note) "stereoscopic" photos of real (real note) women, firing silver ball into cups, etc....
Childish fun.
The dog eventually worked out that he was on one of those long extending leads that was nearly half as long as the entire arcade. So he lay down in the middle and had a sleep while I threw away my money, and other arcade visitors tried to avoid tripping over the lead! (I still claim I made it more fun for them.)
Trouble is I told my friend's partner about it. His immediate reaction was to turn to my friend and say "can we go". He nodded condescendingly, then looked at me with a glare that said "Great, that is one day of my weekend fucked up thanks to you."
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