“A Privileged Position”: The Head Was in the Fruit Machine

The human fruit machine, for anyone who has never queued for one, is three adults with three bags of fruit. A child pays, and at a signal each adult pulls out one piece. Matching combinations win prizes. Nothing the same is the normal condition of the universe, and also of our kitchen. A parent on a 2007 forum reported that it went down well at their children’s junior school. At Purbrook Infant School the staff dress as elves to run one at the Christmas fair. And one PTA minuted in April 2026 the question of whether Year 5 could do a human fruit machine using balls instead of fruit, which is a fruit machine with the fruit taken out, and I have sat through that kind of meeting.

So when our PTA emailed to ask what we could offer for the summer fair, I offered to be a reel. I bought a yellow T-shirt. I bought real fruit, because plastic felt like cheating. I practised at home with the youngest pulling my arm as the lever, until he got bored and started pulling it for no reason during dinner.

On the day I was the middle reel, between a Year 6 dad with his own bananas and the deputy head, who had read the Raglan newsletter too and had come in a lime-green shirt. For the first half-hour it ran fairly. The deputy head drew honestly. The dad drew honestly. Nobody won anything, and a small boy at the front of the queue lost three times in a row and began to look as if he would remember it at forty.

Then I started watching the other two reels’ hands. If the dad came up with a lemon, so did I. By three o’clock the jackpot rate at our stall had become a matter of public comment, a Year 5 girl with a clipboard was keeping a tally at the side, and the PTA treasurer came over to ask, very kindly, why we were thirty-one prizes down.

They have asked me back next year. In a different role. I am to be in charge of the balls.