|
I can only go back to what I remember from 1922, and before that what my parents told me.
We lived a stone's throw from the Serpentine Ground which held the annual Onion Fair, and I can remember when its lighting was by naphtha flares, it was one of Aston's traditions, it belonged to Aston and they came from all over Birmingham to enjoy all the fun of the fair.
It fascinated me as a child, and race down there, and I became a stooge, Charlie Hickman had a boxing booth and he would call me onto the front stage outside the booth and pretend to cut a potato in half with a great cutlass, which I held in my hand, of course the potato was already in two but stuck back and I had to put a terror-stricken face on but it was a free entrance. I was stooge to the magician the Great Maskelyn and found out how one was sawed in half.
The greatest thrill was when the lion escaped, all the fair hands rushed to help capture him so we enjoyed a few rides on the roundabouts. Incidentally, they didn't capture the lion that went into the churchyard, it gave itself up, the poor beast was more frightened than the population, it had got no teeth anyway, and I can remember when the fair came the next year, the trainer's coat was hung up outside the big tent, ripped to ribbons, but it was well known that his claws had been cut and probably the oldest lion in captivity. |
