Rusty squares

Extra rusty triangles

“Hi Walter”
Mo extended a hand which was enveloped in Walters crushing paw like a twig.
“Not a great turn out I’m afraid, apparently Blackpool are at home tonight and they forgot to put any posters up. Still what else would we be doing on a Tuesday night, sitting in a pub right? May as well make some noise and have some fun eh?”  
This was a useful philosophy and prevented dwelling on potentially demoralising evenings like this.  
After a couple of cans and a brief chat Walter found himself feeling slightly awkward as the band starting to get involved in band activities, tuning up, sorting out set lists etc. He ambled out to the bar and decided out of the three candidates that the guy in the corner looked the best bet for a bit of company so he sat down with a beer, some crisps and introduced himself.
“Alright?”    
Little legs peered fearfully at Walter. Though to be fair most people were bigger than him this person was probably four times his size and difficult to read. Was he weird, violent or worse very tedious?  In the end though his natural affability won out and he gave a smile and a thumbs up.
“Grab a pew, if you can find anywhere to sit” he joked
Thereafter the conversation flowed surprisingly easily, considering, and the time before the band came on passed quickly and equably. Little legs with his taxi driving experience was, after all, an expert in conversation with strangers and Walter literally out of his box was thirsty for conversation and in the mood for new friends and experiences.
Over the next few hours whilst chatting, laughing swapping life stories and recounting the events of the last few days there was a creeping realisation as they supped and silently reflected that both had reached a watershed. While Walter got the beers in Little legs thought about Walters real and imagined traveller experience and it sent him off on his own childhood memory trip. He remembered and recounted to a returned and interested Walter the arrival of the yearly fun fair in Welwyn.
“The first sign was one single caravan in the field”
He described how this would be followed quickly by a variety of exotic vans, trailers and cars appearing like wildflowers erupting in a desert after rain. Gradually then the skeletal frames of the rides would rise, the bones of the waltzer, dodgems and swing roundabouts.
“Every day I would stop on my bike ride home from school and see what was new. It was so exciting”
We weren’t so keen on the people tho’ stupid really”
He recounted to a disapproving Walter the fear and suspicion. As outsiders they stirred up the usual mixture of overwrought and implausible stories; ‘They steal your cats to make gonks’ was one rumour, another that ‘incest is the norm’. One story which was accurate was the fearlessness and toughness of the gypsy boys in a fight. Contests between the top local hard nuts and the gypsy boys invariably resulted in victory for the visitors.
“They whipped our top fighter, we couldn’t believe it though secretly we were pleased, nasty bully he was. Never the same after that humiliation tho”
He remembered a fearful encounter himself. One year he discovered, whilst playing the one armed bandits in a small tent in a dark corner of the fair, that with a bit of effort he could squeeze his fingers in and steal the pennies collecting in a space at the bottom of the machine. Finally greed overcoming caution he got careless and was spied by the owner who set his feral looking lad on him. He ran out of the tent and out of the fair towards the surrounding woods with the boy in pursuit. After a terrifying lung bursting run he reached and entered the local newsagents  whereupon the boy after glaring through the frosted glass door slunk away like a thwarted wolf.
“Never went again after that, shame I loved it, sitting by the big speakers listening to glam rock and finding loose change in the waltzer seats.”