Don’t stare at the tiger…

Up and over the top of the hill, up into the darkening sky, and down beginning down, I saw it - the clown smile on the landscape, a hurdy-gurdy scar of colour in the fields.

The circus was in town, the circus was back in town.

Well, not quite in town, but on the outskirts, at the crossroads - the outskirts at the crossroads where all bad things, evil things, should be. Now I’m not saying that circuses are bad, and I’m not saying that they’re evil, I’d never say bad things about the circus or circus folk – but, ‘cross my fingers, don’t wave at the clown, don’t stare at the tiger, the circus is in town’.

There’s something about the circus that I love and hate, something that both excites me, and at the same time frightens me half to death. I feel no indifference for the circus. I can’t take it or leave it. I either go or stay away. Either way, I can’t really rest until the tent is furled and packed safely in the tent lorry, the wagons loaded, the clown’s ladders stowed, and the summer circus no more than a memory, a tattered circus poster flapping in a winter wind.

Why this should be I simply don’t know for sure, but I’ve always loved and dreaded the circus. It isn’t the clowns, or the ringmaster’s red coat, his black top hat held out for all to see, and it isn’t the sparkly cowgirl on her pure white horse, nor the aerialists, or the jugglers, the strong man, the band, or the smell of the sawdust, it isn’t even the candy floss balloons.

I think it’s the tigers.

When I was a boy and the circus came to town I’d wait for the tigers to escape and come to eat me.

My comics were full of tigers escaping from the circus and terrorising small English towns, and wherever you went people would say say; ‘I hope the tigers don’t escape and come to eat you.’ Everyone said it when the circus was in town. My Uncles and Aunts, my Gran, my Mum, my Dad, Mr. Smedley, Mr. Bingham, Old Mother Annie, Mr. Click-Your-Sticks. They all said; ‘I hope the tigers don’t escape and come to eat you.’

I’d spend three long days and even longer nights praying that the tigers would stay safely in their cages and not come to eat me. And, after my trip to the circus, I’d run home convinced that the tigers were just behind me, rushing to bed to hide my head beneath the imagined safety of the big, green, eiderdown.

They don’t have tigers at the circus any more. They aren’t allowed to – health and safety, the animal protection league, too many small boys eaten for tiger’s dinners. Doesn’t make any difference though - ‘cross my fingers, don’t wave at the clown, don’t stare at the tiger, the circus is in town’.