IN 1227 King Henry III granted a Charter to the Bishop of Salisbury to hold a fair on the third Thursday of October every year.

It’s amazing that the fair is still running – although in a slightly different capacity to nearly 800 years ago.

There’s a bit more ‘Boom boom boom, now let me hear you say way-oh, way-oh’ now, and a bit less pox.

As a child I remember looking up at the teenagers in The Cage and wishing I was like them. Then as a teen, when my friends and I stalked through the rides like Kiefer Sutherland and his gang in The Lost Boys.

I still like going as an adult, especially when seeing it through a child’s eyes.

My first job out of university was as a nanny and I took my ten, six and eight-year-old charges Jack, George and Charlie – and although I was only good for the dodgems by then as a past-it 22-year-old – they didn't seem to mind and I believe we had fun.

I can understand why some Salisbury folk are not fussed about the fair though.

It loses its appeal in the daytime, and what looks exciting, colourful and exotic as it flares in the dark is, in the cold light of day, as tacky and un-lovely as a Vegas showgirl’s boob-job scars.

But at night it’s a spectacle.

It’s not very often that the city is alive and glowing after 5pm, so it’s great that the fair kicks fire out of the smouldering embers of Salisbury’s night life on a cold autumn eve.

Plus neon on medieval stone as the leaves are turning and falling makes the city look weird and beautiful.

I bought a DSLR camera a while back and even took a photography course but haven’t used it enough, so would like to take a trip into town come nightfall, and use the lights and contrasts as good practice for playing around with shutter speeds and aperture.

Plus I get to eat one of those inexplicably radioactive-red toffee apples.