Fun of the Fair
By MARY HOLLAND
The human element live up to their parts with no direction at all. There are the tragi-comic vignettes caught in groups between the automatic dishwashers and the revolving ovens, and the milling masses of .the Saturday-night-out crowd. The first impression is of individuals frantically searching for each other because one half of a
couple or a family has been hypnotised into a trance by the huckster selling some gadget like the Rite Neata Trouser Creaser (why not trousa creasa?), while the other has moved on to the delights of a burglar-proof house lighting system. Then you get the hang of it and just move slowly with the crowd. There are great squat women parked in the comfy chairs reserved for demon- stration purposes, gossiping amiably about their families and ignoring the anxious appeals of the salesman who wants to sit a potential buyer in their seats so he can demonstrate his combined sink unit, which incorporates dishwasher, spin- dryer', washing machine, mangle and about twenty irrelevant pointless trays. Exhausted children sprawl all over the floor clutching at balloons and giant packets of popcorn; teenagers like rows of tender piglets dressed in black leather gear crowd forward to the giveaway samples of Canadian sweetcorn pickle on rye bread, one young couple is carefully wiping the plastic con- tainer from which they have just eaten a prawn cocktail to pack it away in their shopping bag. Whole families stand bemused while rows of street market hucksters who have surely been brought up en fnasse from Petticoat Lane for the night flog sandwich toasters, nonstick saucepans, plastic tablecloths, electric fruit juice extractors, multi-purpose knives. Buying is compulsive and long before the salesman has swung into his time- honoured peroration, `I'm not asking a fiver Madam, I'm not asking half a fiver. This is a special Exhibition offer and my manufacturers guarantee etc.,' most of us have clamoured to hand over our money for a gadget we momen- tarily believe will transform our kitchens if not our lives.
There is all the fun of the fair and most of the tawdry squalor—tangerine peel, empty ice-cream cartons trailing dirty white rivulets across the floor, chrome and balloons and hot dogs and dreary bars. It wouldn't be surprising to find the stallkeepers in clowns' make-up or suddenly to come across someone washing' out a dirty spangled singlet in a chipped basin of cold water.
What is lacking is any lightness or magic in the style of the exhibition itself. The decorations are garish without being gay. There is too much of those harsh acid yellows and green and blues in shiny papers and stained glass fountains like those in the proliferating restaurants with names like Golden Egg Cup and Platter/Wimpy house. It's hard enough to take in cheap 'n' cheerful eating houses but heaven' knows what it has to do with the idea of an Ideal Home.
Take—and welcome to them—the `islands of leisure.' In a murky pool of what looks like petrol mixed with blue/black ink there are wax tableaux depicting what are presumably meant to be scenes of ideal leisure in the ideal home, revolving on round platforms which look dangerously as though they are going to topple over into the pool. As you enter the marquee there are notices telling you not to throw coins into the lake.as it will upset the mechanism. Everyone stands about obviously aching for someone else to throw the first coin which will drown the whole nasty array of patronising, platinum-wigged waxworks sitting around in contemporary attitudes in white egg- shaped chairs, or baking potatoes in white swedish stoves, or pouring out champagne for a candle-lit diner a deux, and all dressed in impeccable lounging clothes. Are they really meant to represent a utopian dream of what life will be when the computers take over the work? They seem as monstrously patronising as the strictures about the masses in their minis which bedevil some of our most self-important progres- sive thinkers.
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