Clowning Around

A few weeks back some large lorries pulling trailers and then huge caravans behind rolled in to Town.

The circus was coming with these bright yellow and red stripy tents.

Now I racked my brain over and over, so many times.  For the life of me I can never remember ever going to a circus.  Had the discussion with my Brother and no, he couldn't recall ever going either.

Spoke to my Dad, nope, he'd never taken us to a circus.  He thinks the last time he went to a circus was to celebrate the Queen's Coronation.  Yes, we are talking 60 years ago.

Well what is a girl to do but rush down and grab some font row tickets?

We arrived early and waitng about 10 minutes before we were allowed to go in.  Then quickly found our seats on the front row and waited.

Then out came the clowns out to sell what I would describe as 'tat'.  The sort of bright light that spins round on the end of a stick, face painting, animal balloons etc etc.  The sort of things that get played with that day and end up broken by lunchtime the day after.  However, the spinning plates did seem to appeal to The Boy & Girl and at £3 each I gave in and let them have one each.

That smile above was certainly worth the costs of the plates.

The boy seems to get the hang of it quite quickly.  The Girl took a little longer as the JIA in her wrists was giving her a little discomfort for a few days but she did manage to spin the plate when feeling better.  This 30 minutes seemed to drag on quite a while and a huge bucket of popcorn was consumed along with cans of pop.

The show began with a young lady showing some high quality hola hoop skills and we were stunned by the acrobatics and rope, silk ties and ring displays all done far up in the roof of the tent interspersed with the obligatory Clown acts and audience participation.

  

There was an interval and cries for a hot dog and another drink rang loudly in my ears.  How could I refuse those cheeky little faces?

The second half concluded with some more roof top acrobats, clown fun and the finale was a cowboy and cow girl act with knife throwing and plenty of fire adding the wow factor.

I was surprised how much The Girl and Boy enjoyed it.  Simple fun, no electric gadgets, light shows or special effects.  

A lovely evening out for all; except for my purse who parted with more cash for the night's goodies than the actual tickets cost but you get to expect that nowadays, don't you.

Has your family ever been to the Circus, What did they think of it all?  Do you think its an out of date form of family entertainment?  Would love to hear of your experiences at the Circus.