Dino

Dino

I’ve always had a bit of a thing for dinosaurs. From my very first school trip to The Natural History Museum in the early 70’s where, I gazed open-mouthed at ‘Dippy’ the Diplodocus skeleton trying to get my ten year old brain to imagine a world in which this vast creature roamed and grazed the plains of what is now North America, I was hooked. I’d have to wait another twenty years to see this Jurassic wonder made flesh, or rather CGI rendered, in the groundbreaking Jurassic Park movies.

Amazingly, I was able to beat Mr Spielberg to the punch by a good ten years, albeit in a low budget, styrofoam costumed, near-drowning kind of way. What follows, isn’t so much a kiss and tell-all revelation, more a ‘waddled a bit and fell over’ tragi-comedy of botched design, teenage stupidity and wanton capitalism. How I ever managed to escape death, not once but twice is beyond me, and all because I decided to take a low paid, low risk summer job at a local theme park.

The Alton Towers of 1982 bears no comparison to its modern incarnation. Back then, the Corkscrew rollercoaster was practically new and the main draw for visitors. My official job title was Harness Release Operative, but rides assistant was less of a mouthful. As the cars glided into the station, my job was to stamp frantically on the barely visible steel pedals poking out the side. The first few times I missed the kick plates altogether, performing a superb ‘man slips on fifteen invisible banana skins’ impression. But with a little out of hours practice I soon mastered the technique and before long I could wink at girls and stamp at the same time.

With bulging calf muscles and a respectable suntan, I left the corkscrew behind and was promoted to ride assistant relief worker, which meant I provided twenty minute breaks for my co-workers. After a few minor misunderstandings I gained the respect and punctuality of everyone. My approach was simple – if you didn't come back on time I didn’t come back to relieve you.

Dotted around the gardens were small wooden sheds which acted as staff rooms and, if the coast was clear, love-shacks for opportunistic Romeos. To avoid any embarrassing interruptions we created a shed occupancy code. A Towers brochure stuffed between the handle and door meant, come back in half an hour. This worked fine as long as the management didn’t do one of their unannounced inspections. Discovering a live ‘brochure moment’ meant instant dismissal and heightened surveillance. I never indulged in any shed based romances mainly because I wasn’t very successful at suave speed-seduction, unlike Tom the Corkscrew operator who sat in his glass control tower with one hand on a pair of binoculars and the other wrapped around the PA microphone as though he might start singing at any moment. He was Marc Bolan's doppelganger. We all thought it uncanny and a little odd that such a man chose to work on the corkscrew and not in a T-Rex tribute band. His sexual conquests were legendary. From first amplified flirtation to complete trouser removal took him an amazing thirteen minutes. To my knowledge his record still stands.

Apart from the Spanish Galleon, the Corkscrew and the Log Flume there was little else to wow visitors. You could wander past attractions like the planetarium, Ghost House and doll-world without even noticing they were there. One such mediocrity was Dinosaur Kingdom; complete with hollow plastic boring-o-saurus’s placed in amongst stunted palm trees and waist-high nettles. In an effort to attract more people the manager said ‘what Dinosaur World needs is a scary interactive monster. Something like a T- Rex.’

So, for over a week, the set designers toiled to produce a creature so terrifying no one could look at it without laughing. Dino, as he was more affectionately known, stood seven feet high. Constructed of builders foam, chicken wire and glass fibre, he weighed a ton, stunk of paint thinners and grinned like a simpleton. In today’s Health and Safety obsessed world, he wouldn’t have made it past a doodle on the back of a napkin.

But, in order to realise the dream, some naive numpty was required to step forward and breathe life into the creature. Egged on by boredom and mild curiosity I volunteered to have a go. I remember the day so well. There was no time for a dress rehearsal so; my aged fitter, Joe and I entered Shed number 47 at 8am.

Joe

“You’ve gotta push harder or you won’t get in.

ME

“I’m pu-shing as hard as I can.”

Joe

“No! No! Stop what you’re doing and watch me”. Followed by a lot of thuds and bangs, like people moving heavy furniture around

ME

“Oh I see. Blimey, I never realised I was that supple”. Even More thuds and groans

Joe

“Now the other one. Good, good. Yes! That’s it. Keep wriggling it like I showed you.”

ME

“Shit!”

Joe

“What now?”

ME

“Got an itch. Would you mind?”

Joe

“No time for itches. Come on or you’ll be late.”

Imagine if you will, another twenty minutes of similar exchanges. I finally emerged at 9am, locked inside the leaden sauna suit, viewing the world through a tiny hole in Dino’s chest. Walking was a real problem. The clever designers had only made enough room for two green wellies, made to look like claws. I was forced to perform a sort of Parkinsonian, shuffle, with a hint of someone desperately needing a shit. This was supposed to be a predator, moving like a gazelle, shredding its prey with razor sharp teeth and claws. Dino’s only hope of catching anything was to give them at least a week’s notice to attack or failing that, wait till dark, shuffle up behind something decrepit and fall on it.

Everyone thought it was hilarious. It didn’t matter that I was close to death from heat exhaustion and asphyxiation.

“Simon, go over to the tar pool and sit in the shallows while we fetch the dry ice” said the area manager, via megaphone.

“Isn’t there a crane?” I asked, desperately.

“We could roll him?” suggested his assistant. I eventually made it to the water’s edge and paused for a breather. Some kind soul poked a straw through my chest slit and yelled “suck!” I duly obliged, draining their can of orange Fanta in two gulps.

“Go a bit deeper” yelled the manager. Wading through foetid water and pondweed was even harder, and I started to wish I’d made a will.

“That’s it. Stop there!” ordered the megaphone.

“I didn’t think Tyrannosaurs liked water?” said the assistant, throwing huge chunks of dry ice into the swamp.

“This one does. Simon! Walk slowly towards the shore. Oh, and don’t forget to growl menacingly.”

It was difficult to breathe, never mind growling, but I tried nonetheless. As I inched forwards both my wellies quickly filled with water. Growling for all I was worth, the moveable tail section broke off and sank. I was forced to abandon Dino through his arse and paddle towards the shore. As I joined the rest of the onlookers we all watched Dino sway a few times before toppling over on his side. The manager looked me up and down and shaking his head said:

“Well, I suppose we could explore the Loch Ness monster angle?”

For all I know, Dino’s probably still lying in the primordial ooze, waiting to be discovered by Tony Robinson’s successor in Time Team 2100.

Dino Mk 2, or as the rides manager liked to call him ‘Son of Dino’ was a much more successful, lighter, land going version. A state of the art department design, equipped with taped copyright sensitive,T-Rex death roars, a hand operated swishy tail and a ‘kick to open’ escape hatch, via a hidden chest plate, like the ones used in buses. A periscopic mirror snaked up to one of his nostrils, enabling a pretty good panoramic view of his immediate kill zone. The whole suit shed about forty pounds, and walking up to thirty or forty feet was possible without the operator succumbing to fatal heat exhaustion or slow, silent suffocation. The problem was, Dino 2 had lost his razor sharp teeth and cold soulless eyes and gained rounded off cow teeth, a noticeable overbite and large roadsweeper eyelashes. He was definitely more Disney than Jurassic park, and may have even strayed into T-Rex hooker territory.

Even though I’d vowed never to step into the styrofoam death suit ever again, the manager offered to pay me double, until an unwitting sacrifice could be recruited.

This time there was no fanfare or megaphone assisted instructions, just myself and the fitter trying things out in a seldom used part of the estate. Alton Towers own Area 51, but without all the endless conspiracy theories and crap aliens. There were however early Dino iterations scattered about the place. Hastily painted Limbs, a couple of mouldy papier mache heads and a half-buried tale which looked like an abandoned funeral.

Getting into this costume was far easier. With a generous application of vaseline and a short run up, I could be in situ and operational in less than five minutes. Joe the fitter and co-designer held open the escape hatch with one hand whilst altering its angle with the other, for optimum insertion. After a few minor injuries we found a feet first approach worked the best, and once inside I could just about swivel my body round to face the correct way.

Two weeks later, nursing a bruised groin and some mild chaffing, Joe and I were ready for the big unveil. The rides manager chose to stage Dino 2’s coming out party underneath the log flume, close to the old Dinosaur graveyard, in the hope of ramping up the excitement with a surprise ‘Thriller-esque’ display of ferocity and mayhem. The plan was to stand perfectly still amongst its deceased forebears and then gradually come to life like Frankenstein's monster plugged into an overnight charger. The manager opted for a daily 3pm spectacle, comparing it to the reasonably predictable old faithful geyser in Yellowstone national park. He was aiming for the ‘if you build it they will come’ idea.

On the day in question, John, the dry ice man and I stood next to each other, waiting for the air horn fanfare.

“Are you my tethered goat?” I whispered to John

“No such luck. No, I'm in charge of the special effects.” He lifted up a long nozzle attached to a longer pipe, not dissimilar to a hoover.

“Oh right. Hadn’t you better start fogging then?”

“I’m waiting for my signal. The first blast is for me and the second is for you.” A few seconds later we heard one disgusting blast from a distinctly flatulent air horn. John reached down and rummaged around for a few seconds, before the nozzle he was holding started producing clouds of acrid white smoke. A few seconds later and we were both coughing and retching.

“Fu-uck! exclaimed John in between coughs.”They’ve given me a fuckin smoke machine, not a dry ice one.” A few seconds after that I heard the sound of someone running away. John had deserted the scene, leaving me to choke to death. A second, louder fart sounded and I began waddling away as quickly as I was able. By now the smoke had found its way inside my costume and my eyes were beginning to smart.

Luckily, the smoke was so dense, no one witnessed the cowardly smoke ravaged Dino running fleeing the forest fire, or the fully formed man emerging from his chest, Alien style. Thankfully, neither did any of the assembled workforce, as the sudden change in wind direction put pay to that.

Two weeks later, I found myself resting in between shows, next to an ice cream cart, wishing someone would feed me a Cornetto or at the very least a couple of Orange Maids.When I tried to get up, I was prevented from doing so, by three young scousers, who’d decided to use my not inconsiderable tail as a bench on which to consume their own frozen confectionery.

“Get off my tail!” I whispered aggressively. There was no response from the ice cream licking trio.

“Get off my tail!” I said, louder this time. I tried wriggling and standing but my styrofoam anchor had other ideas. Then I heard some laughter infused liverpudlian whispering coming from my nether regions.

“Eh, pal. Youre not very fuckin ferocious now are yer?” said one of the boys.

“I never knew T-Rex’s could speak. Sing us a song mate” said another.

“Fancy a lick o’ me lolly?” said a third.

My humiliation was complete, and if it hadn’t have been for the intervention of a nearby schoolteacher I think I’d still be there now, arguing with three very unimpressed scousers, who’d discovered that the best way to subdue a T-Rex was to sit on its tail, eat an ice cream and take the piss.