2 Dec 2009

Tonight we went to a circus. The real thing. Not just something showing on the Television. With real performers too. Yep, I know, amazing isn’t it.

I was a little surprised when we went into the tent. You may remember when at a fair or Timezone, you have those slots that you have to get the ball through and it might be that some slots are worth more points than others. Well, the entrances to the circus tent were like that. Depending on how much you paid, depended on which slot you went through. But, just like the game, once through, you could sit wherever you liked.

There were some seats close to the action that looked promising, so we parked and started enjoying the show. I was a little worried. The first part of the show was for the live stock to parade around the ring. Problem was they were parading on the outside of the ring. So, there was this rather large elephant about 2 metres away from where I sat. And then, another one. I got my first closeup of what an elephant looks like. Well, a circus one anyway.

A short time after we settled into our seats, a friend of Ashutosh’s family came over and directed us to some VIP seats. I was rather grateful that we moved. It was a better view of the show.

As the show went on there were the usual performers. Acrobats, clowns, jugglers, fire eaters and the likes. One person stood out because of the rather bizarre act. He was drinking large quantities of water, then putting it all back in the container he got it from. At one point he drank two glasses of this raspberry coloured water and then two big jugs of water. When he spat it back out, the water was a mixture of both. Yep, you’re right. Kinda weird. (The sort of thing I could see Paul do at the end of the Natcoll Christmas do).

I absolutely love to hear children laugh. Tonight was special for me because the children around me were almost beside themselves when the clowns performed. I really didn’t understand much of the performance but I knew that it was funny.

I think, on reflection there are two things that stood out for me tonight. Well, three if you count the laughing children. The first is that there are some really cleaver people out there. Talented people who can tie themselves in knots and know how to untie themselves afterwards. The second is that for many of the performers, it seemed that they had been at it either to long or would rather have been somewhere else. There were two or three performers who gave the impression that they ‘lived’ for what they were doing. For many of them, it was an ‘existence’. A living or imprisonment. I’m sure you would have seen that look of ‘Oh my God, not another performance I have to do.’ Well, I was a little surprised as to how many of the performers wore that mask.