Millie Week 51 - Mon 26 - Sat 31 Aug 1991

There was a traveling fairground that visited Tunbridge Wells very August bank holiday, and I know there's one that visits Blackheath in South London at Easter. The two got conflated for this series of cartoons.

My favourite fairground ride is the Waltzer - the one that Gemma comes a cropper on in the third strip. I remember when I was a kid sharing one with my friend Mark, who could at times be a bit of a geek. It was one where the spinning circular booth span around on the floor, but the floor undulated as you travelled around, causing the booth to speed up, slow down and change direction seemingly at random. When we staggered off the ride after five minutes of furious g forces, Mark looked at me and said, 'I didn't understand the physics of that...'

My wife and I have come to a pact about fairground rides after a Waltzer at Blackpool Pleasure Beach churned her up so much she was sick. I don't do heights. Linda doesn't do circumferences.

Several South London landmarks are pointed out from the top of the ferris wheel. Canary Wharf was being built at the time, on the Isle of Dogs, a peninsula of land formed by a loop in the Thames that juts into south London like the lug of a jigsaw piece. One Canada Square was brand new, and had just become the tallest building in the UK (a title now taken by The Shard at London Bridge). The Daily Mirror was to move there a few years later.