A short while ago I went to the circus! According to the information I was given it was the Circus Of France and they were based for a while at the Newnham Court shopping thing on the edge of Maidstone.
The tickets seemed expensive to me, although the last time I went to the circus was around 1991. The arena tent itself was pretty big and we were guided to some bench seats. I tried to take a photo but dropped my phone under the raised seating. I had to borrow someone else’s phone to use their camera flash to see below the seating and to find my phone, I could just reach it!
The acts we saw were all human, so animal lovers don’t have to worry about the living conditions. There was a juggler who came on in different costumes for three different acts, the high-wire artistes also did the trapeze at the end of the show, there was a climbing rope act and also a foot juggler (who was dull). The clowns provided reasonable entertainment for the scene changes although I would have liked to see a clown car fall apart in the ring.
The first ropes act included Spider-Man, which was an interesting piece of marketing, and also the anti-Spider-Man who was dressed in black. My sons loved this. During the interval there was the chance to have your photograph taken with Spiderman. We didn’t do this, but I can understand why the circus did this.
The knife throwing act was interesting. There was the typical man throwing the knives and a woman having knives thrown at (or not) her. The lady was tied to an upright spinning disc and the disc was set in motion. Before the man could throw a knife the axle broke and the woman and disc crashed to the floor, woman first and the mechanism on top of her. I have to say the staff reacted really quickly to this and the lady came back on stage shortly afterwards and completed the act.
The best part of the show was the trapeze act:
Leaving the circus there was some lovely blossom trees.
