The circus has come to town

Last Friday night we took Thomas to Cirq*e du Sol*il. I know it is hideously expensive but we justified it by buying the tickets through a large international charity. And so in fact, felt as if we had done a good deed! Excellent, since I have always wanted to go and see Cirq*e du Sol*il. It was of course simply amazing, the things those people do with their bodies is beyond anything I would even think of doing, let alone actually do it, and offcourse in this case they manage to do it with enormous grace too.

Gaye and I really enjoyed it. But what we also really enjoyed was taking Thomas.

It started at 8:00pm (so past bedtime), it was dark, the tent was amazing (on side issue the incredible ease of being there was a credit to fabulous organization) and Thomas could pick his own treat. He chose prin*les which spent much of the performance in his hand, frozen somewhere between his mouth and the packet while he watched with huge eyes some amazing stunt or another. Either that or he was wildly pointing something out – ‘look Muma, look at that”

Through some sort of amazing organization of my own, he started circus classes himself the next morning (soccer season is over and I thought something that was about fun and just getting better yourself would be good and he was really keen on circus – there was a whole thing about whether to do indoor soccer or not first), which are run locally by a fabulous company, which keeps it fun and safe. The next morning found him on the trapeze hanging upside down, mastering the long attempted art of hoola-hooping and attempting to juggle.

And as it turns out in the end of year performance for school the theme is circus. It is completely lovely to have our boy talking and doing circus things, it is wonderful and reassuring that in a world of computer games that something pretty simple but amazing like a circus can still capture and hold the imagination of a seven and three-quarter year old.