I READ with some interest and some dismay the article regarding Maldon District Council acting as spoilsports with regard to fun fairs.

Also, its attitude could be traced to a single complaint.

I live opposite the upper field of the Promenade Park and in common with other properties, funfairs are being sited some 35 paces from our windows.

I am aware, also, there have been several complaints featuring this matter but also that many people complain to each other but, for one reason or another, do not make their complaint official.

I am also sorry to learn the council restrictions are, apparently, impinging on the profitability of the funfair.

The inference seems to be one should not complain because it leads to a reduction in takings.

To put the problem in context, there is no complaint against funfairs, but rather against their playing low frequency jungle beat music, which is probably a mind game played on their patrons.

The worst thing about a low frequency beat is that it travels well through air, but also through the ground.

To close one’s windows, and who wants to in this weather, is not an option because the ground wave travels up the walls and re-emerges inside a building as rhythmic vibrations.

The anticipated reason for using this at funfairs being that a deep rhythm, of roughly 120 beats per minute, raises the heart rate of patrons, hence their excitement and, in turn, leads them to spend longer in a funfair environment.

However, patrons even then rarely spend longer than an hour and a half in the funfair, whereas the residential neighbours of these funfairs have to endure primitive drum music for up to seven hours per day.

For many of these residents with serious heart and health conditions, particularly the elderly, this can be very detrimental indeed.

Nearby residents do not have to endure a single funfair per year either.

Most years there are two, and this year a mobile cinema has also been thrown in - and to overcome that, one had to shout in one’s own home to top the soundtrack of the film being played in the park.

In general there is no desire to stop people having fun, and the funfairs could easily be sited further into the parkland, where they once were, where they created no nuisance to anybody.

Albeit, one imagines the owners of funfairs may attempt to browbeat the council to allow them to use the upper field in Promenade Park because it is the more lucrative position.

It is not, however, the duty of the nearby residents of the Promenade Park to assist, at their own discomfort, to maximise the profits of funfairs.

So funfairs are quite acceptable to most people, provided they are sited appropriately.

Vernon J Yarker, Mill Road, Maldon