The Daily Wrona: August 2007

You know the old saying "It's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog", right? Well, Circus Ricardo is a small traditional* circus. It's an itty-bitty circus with the biggest heart on the circuit!

So there we were at the 6pm show in Southwold. Lovely little seaside town where we saw Justo and crew two years ago. Among the 50+ audience members were Hannah, Kai, Jack, Kasper, me and our friends John and Tracey and their kids Rafe (2) and Ethan (4).

The show was going great; Daredevil Deville's little brother juggled a set of cricket balls (dropped 2x), bigger sofe foam balls (dropped 3x). 3 flat rings (dropped 2x), 5 flat rings (dropped 3x) and 3 juggling pins (no drops!)! Human error, duff CD player and music miscues and a magic trick where the magician gets locked in a trunk and his assisstant stands atop the trunk and lifts a surrounding curtain over her head and FLASH the magician has somehow escaped the trunk and switched places with the assisstant! Thats how it was supposed to go. When the assisstant lifted the curtain around herself to make the switcheroo, after nearly an uncomfortable (read AGONISING) 90 seconds we kinda got the feeling that this gag wasn't going according to plan! But when they finaly did get thetrick figured out; the curtain dropped and...the magician was outside the box and lo and behold the assisstant ended up where he was. In the box. Wow. No animals are involved in the recent tour and Larry the Laughing Mule was sorely missed at todays show.

Cut to Kai getting picked by Justo the Clown (Justo owns Circus Ricardo with his brother Rupert, true names I kid you not) as a Trainee Clown Premiere Classe. He deftly fabricates a balloon hat and balloon clown nose out of, well, balloons of course and gets her to spin two plastic plates on sticks one held in heach hand. She's in her element!

Justo then asks Kai to face the audience and spread 'em; he bends over and kneels down and without so much as a "UNGH, MY SPINE!" he hoists her up in the traditional sit-on-my-shoulders attitude! Then, the dozy bozo goes and grabs his UNICYCLE!

"No way!" Hannah and I say in unison as Tracey looks over at Hannah in amazement.

Yes way.

*I find that the word "traditional" gets bandied around quite a bit over here; Traditional Fish n' Chips, Traditional Pub Fayre, Traditional Sunday Roast Dinner. 9/10 times it has to do with food and the two traditional forms of English cuisine; boiled and roasted. Traditional English Breakfasts (aka The Full Monty) and the aforementioned Fish n' Chips fall outside these preparation modes and form their own sub-cookagory called "Fried till it hurts". The greasier the food the less chewing there is involved.