| A TWICE WEEKLY SERIAL OF BIG TOP FOLK BY
SIMON PARKE |
|
EPISODE 20
FIRST NIGHT
"Ladeez and Gennulmen! Kids and creeps! Welcome to Burt Turtle's Amazingly Big Top!"
It is the first night in the market town of Nettleby, and Ringo the Ring Master is King of the Ring, no question.
"Now where is my whip? Has someone stolen it? Is it under your seat perhaps? I need a whip! We cannot have a circus without a whip!"
At this point, Jess the Clown staggers on in terror, claiming there's a snake in his coat.
"Argghh! A snake! A snake!"
It turns out to be a whip, which Ringo snatches from him in mock fury, and then beats him with the handle. Jess takes the blows and then scrambles off. He has the crowd's sympathy already.
"Clowns!" roars Ringo. "Hopefully that's the last we'll see of him!"
Children in the audience object.
"What??!" asks Ringo. "You want to see more of the clown?"
"Yeeess!" shout he children.
"Can't hear you."
"Yeeess!!"
"I think I'm going a little deaf. Can't hear anything."
"YEEESS!!"
"Quite impossible, quite impossible! No more clowns. But tell me – have you ever heard a whip crack? A real whip crack?? No? Then listen up now! Or you'll not only hear the whip. But feel it!"
He moves towards some children menacingly. They scream, and Ringo moves back to the centre of the ring.
"Now, I crack my whip once – CRACK! – twice – CRACK! – thrice – CRACK, and behold, ladeez and gennulmen, the Terrifying Triple Jockeys!"
The arrival of the horses is a grand ice-breaker – stomping, leaping, snorting action; fast and daring, with Davido particularly dashing in Cossack costume. The Triple Jockey Act, in which the riders stand three high on a horse, was made famous by the Fossetts way back, but remains ever popular, as the gasps now show.
"It's great to see the faces of the audience when I ride past," says one of the team. "They jump alive when I look at them! It's like they've come to be frightened."
And of course that's exactly why they've come. The nervous system begs for the sawdust relaxation of terror, awe and laughter. It begs for the odd, the peculiar and dangerous. That's why people come to the circus. As Dickens said, "People must be amused. They can't always be a-learning."
More clowning around |
