Chapter 226: The Odd Ones

 

The Odd Ones – Finding Flow

“The Odd Ones is a show about the differences of people. A social and physical dance about finding your place in a group, being authentically you, and about the adaptations we all have to manage when being with others.”

 Simon Granit Ossoinak, director and co-creator with Stasy Terehhova and Cristian Boscheri<
co-produced with Circusstad, and Perplx, a circus production hub and workspace for contemporary cirucs in Flanders.

https://www.simongranit.com/creations   For The Odd Ones video trailer on Vimeo click here..

It was a school night, and I was exhausted. My Year 10s have been practising dialogues about turning down invitations, and I had every excuse lined up myself: recovering from back surgery, lessons to prep, books to mark, supper to cook. Only curiosity won. 

The title The Odd Ones had me from the start. Circus is full of odd ones, my tribe of free spirits exploring the edges of what’s possible. And there was more: a long-overdue catch-up with Ade Berry, Artistic Director of Jackson’s Lane, and another dear friend, Lucy, a fellow teacher and circus lover who had never yet seen a show there. The promise of a large glass of wine, good company, and something strange and beautiful tipped the scales.

Lucy and I sank into our seats, two weary teachers on a school night, and of course a family of four children settled right in front of us. I nudged Lucy, and she winked as if to say, “So much for our night off!” The glimmer of a grinch was short-lived; the kids were immaculately behaved, eyes wide with curiosity. When their mother turned round to ask what was happening after the show and I mentioned the Q&A, her son’s face lit up. “That’s like behind the scenes?” he whispered, as if I’d handed him the universe’s best secret.

The lights dimmed.

Simon moved first, gliding diagonally across the floor, hands and feet crossing in counterpoint as if rewriting gravity. Perhaps it was knowing his Finnish heritage, my mind leapt northward to Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights, to the mulefa, those strange wheeled creatures whose movement is both awkward and sublime. Then came Stasy, spinning serenely, a whirling dervish lost in her own orbit. Cristian followed, hesitant and angular, all elbows and knees, looping a strap round himself until he tangled in a gangly knot. If Mr Bean had studied under Alexander Vantournhout  (see post Chapter 129 on Aneckxanderr) this would be his act. Deadpan, elastic, and utterly captivating. The audience chuckled, drawn in.

The opening unfolded through solos and duets, one performer always slightly the odd one out. Cristian’s awkwardness marked him first, but what struck me wasn’t his oddness so much as his awareness of it. Stasy’s otherworldliness offered counterbalance, coaxing him out through quiet grace and warmth. Simon, by contrast, was a storm of cartwheels, flips, and lightning energy.

As the show evolved, their quirks began to echo, overlap, and finally blend. They mimicked, borrowed, and absorbed one another’s movements until difference became dialogue. Cristian’s journey wasn’t about changing who he was but recognising his own power. Stasy grounded the chaos; Simon fractured and reformed the rhythm with impulsive energy that drove the dynamic forward.

I really enjoyed how the show carried the imprint of street theatre and that direct, unguarded dialogue between movement and emotion. Cristian’s breakdancing brought a raw, syncopated energy that made his awkwardness even more expressive, speaking in its own rhythm, a physical language that slipped between vulnerability and humour. He’s an extraordinary physical actor, disjointed yet fluid, comic yet tender, folding the rhythm of the street into the discipline of the stage.

Beneath it all pulsed a score of loops, synths, and heartbeat rhythm. In the Q&A later, we learned the composer Stijn van Strien (see soundcloud - click here) had spent two decades as a DJ, and you could feel it. The music didn’t accompany the piece; it shaped it. The performers moved with and against its current, sometimes gliding in sync, sometimes breaking away into silence. That conversation between beat and body, pulse and pause, became its own choreography.

Cristian and Simon wove through one another, arms and legs interlaced in a human puzzle, pausing in mirrored curiosity as if to ask, “Where do I begin and you end?” Stasy crouched low, testing her balance, then Simon lifted her, placing her lightly on Cristian’s curved back where she hovered in improbable stillness.

Later, the trio sat in a row, legs scissoring like a living Newton’s cradle, momentum rippling down the line. Another sequence had them leaning back, spine to spine, a bendy domino chain. When Cristian, the tallest and least flexible by circus standards, couldn’t find the angle, they simply switched places, adapting and supporting, making space for one another’s limits.

Then came the collision. Simon launched himself full force into Cristian’s arms. It looked aggressive but wasn’t; it was an explosion of energy seeking containment. Cristian caught him with quiet steadiness, and the gesture became a metaphor for community, for how we hold each other’s wildness and create soft landings.

As their bodies found unison, something otherworldly emerged. Their limbs intertwined until they resembled a multi-limbed creature, part Geek Love freak, part Malik Ibheis dreamscape, grotesque yet tender, absurd yet beautiful. It was a choreography of difference refusing categorisation.

Each performer spoke a different language - parkour, ballet, breakdance, clowning, mime - but over time those dialects merged. Mimicry became empathy. By the end, there was no longer an odd one out. The friction and laughter had given way to flow. What began as three distinct bodies became one evolving rhythm. The Odd Ones turned out not to be about strangeness, but connection.

---

Creation and Conversation

In the Q&A, the company spoke with Artistic Director Ade Berry about how The Odd Ones came to life. It began as a development of Simon’s graduation solo, sparked when he mimicked a fellow performer’s clowning moves and then developed from there the thought of how “oddness” exists in contrast with others, hence the desire to expand from solo to collective. The dramaturgy sketched out as an arc that and detail developed as through the dynamic between the performers as they responded to the kind of open-ended questions that fuel creative process: What happens if I push here? If I mirror
you? If I try that again? Slowly, a pattern began to breathe.

The piece evolved over eight weeks between September and May, shaped by three “outside eyes.” One explored teamwork and trust, another, coming from a street theatre background, focused on emotion and how it’s carried through movement, while the third refined choreography and light. The use of lighting praised by audience members in the Q&A.

Stasy, clearly an introvert, admitted she was more comfortable moving than talking, yet she spoke with the same quiet eloquence she brings to her body. She described how they built sequences that showcased each performer’s strengths while transforming their weaknesses into points of connection. Cristian spoke of trust, of how exaggerating real interactions onstage revealed truth through play. Ade picked up on that thought, noting that adulting consists in (re)connect to that the inner child.

Simon agreed. “The choreography might not change,” he said, “but we do.” Each night they inhabit the same structure yet find new selves within it. That evolution, he added, came in part from asking their parents about childhood quirks and folding those memories back into their characters. 

This morning, reading Philippa Perry’s latest on Substack, I found her reflection on annata, the Buddhist idea of “no fixed self”, echoes that same philosophy.

“The self isn’t a solid, unchanging thing you can pin down once and for all. Instead, you are a flow of sensations, thoughts, feelings, and memories that come together in this moment. You don’t have to uncover one perfect, authentic self and defend it forever. You can allow yourself to change and to keep discovering yourself.”

That is precisely what The Odd Ones celebrates: belonging without erasing difference, and identity not as a fixed point but as something found in motion.

Afterwards we all decamped to the pub. It was a joy to meet Simon, Cri and Stasy, exhausted yet energised. It was great as well to meet Charlie Holland in person, former juggler and one-time programme director at Circus Space, now circus historian, writer, and reviewer of London shows for Kate Kavanagh’s The Circus Diaries. He is also the biographer of The Marvellous Craggs, soon to be published.

Together we raised our glasses, kippis, to the odd ones everywhere.

A Teacher’s Eye

With both parent and teacher hat on, I recognised the personalities on stage instantly. Stasy’s gentle introspection, Simon’s impulsive curiosity, Cristian’s shy clown.. I see that spectrum every day: daydreamers adrift in thought, ADHD whirlwinds unable to sit still because the world moves too slowly, anxious thinkers threading their way through the noise, my classroom in motion.

Circus understands that world. It gives permission to be fully human, to fidget, to fail, to connect.

Simon mentioned that in Sweden, the state shares half the cost with schools to bring performances like this to students. How I wish that were possible here. The Odd Ones would speak to my students, not just those with identified needs, but every teenager caught between Who am I? and Where do I belong?

The next morning, still glowing from the night before, I brought trailer and discussion of The Odd Ones into my Year 10 Spanish lesson. I wrote them a short dialogue for translation inspired by the evening that dovetailed neatly into their current topic; we laughed and talked about what it means to take risks and be seen.

With our World Languages Day coming up, celebrating over a hundred heritages, I’ll remind them of this piece, how Italian, Swedish-Finnish, Estonian, and Dutch performers can move together seamlessly, switching between languages of body and speech. My own Swedish and Italian students in year 7 were glowing that morning too when I showed them the clip, proud to see their cultures, as well as natures, reflected. They stayed behind at break for an encore! 

Coda:

I came to Jackson’s Lane for the play, but also because I knew Ade is leaving after eighteen years as Artistic Director, and that is a fact he mentioned in the Q&A. Ade has been instrumental in forging international circus links, travelling the world and building bridges, especially with the Finnish Institute. Those connections have shaped my own life: from seeing Ilona Jäntti dancing in the woods, to learning “kippis!” from Sakari Männistö and marvelling at the whole Gandini juggling; to Onni Toivonen bringing the house down in the first Shhh!  cabaret ( see post: click here - thanks to Hamish Tjeong for the introduction) that I curated for Jacksons Lane two years running; to the warmth of acro-duo Sasu Peistola & Jenni Lethinen and the sublime Hanna Moisala, from shibari to tightwire. And of course, the Moomins, I will get to Jacksons Lane for that Christmas show! Through it all runs a thread of oddness, maybe the very thing that drew me, Little My. While really I was too caught up in its flow with Ade and Lucy, pictured below, to feel maudlin at the time, there was a certain poignancy. A wondering. Will that connection remain? Watch this space...

Chapter 225: Sand by Kook Ensemble

 

I have been turning over memories of Sand by Kook Ensemble, the creation of Sean Kempton and Michaela O’Connor, ever since I saw it with my daughter back in June at Jacksons Lane. Devon, where the show is set, has always been a mythic county for me. My parents lived there by the sea when they were first married, after they met in the Navy. As the youngest of six, born almost two decades after my eldest sibling, I grew up hearing Devon stories and always felt a kind of yearning to know the parents of those days too.

I finally got to Devon back in 2019, the summer we returned from sailing. I was staying with friends in the National Park and nipped over to Barnstaple with the kids to see Sean and Michaela’s A Simple Story. A family piece with their daughter Chloe at its heart, carrying the teasing subtitle you’d expect from a couple of clowns: Two Idiots Raising a Genius, which delighted my own kids too. It was lovely to meet Sean’s parents afterwards, and I remember him talking about Devon beaches near home with such affection, but ran out of time to make my way to the coast. So back in June this year at Jacksons Lane, when Sand opened with gulls, breaker posts and sandbanks, I really was transported.

The power of memory is central to Sand, only ironically I can’t remember where I’ve put the notebook where I jotted down all my impressions that night on the tube journey home. Now, months on, I find myself travelling by train again, notebook in hand (on the cover of which reads "Creative Ramblings of a Restless Mind"!) reconstructing the evening, this time on my way to see my mum. At ninety-four she still has a prodigious reach into the past yet is increasingly both frustrated by and resigned to what she calls her “glitches” of short-term memory. We watched my father fade gently just past one hundred, ebbing and flowing like the tide.

The show begins at breakfast. A clock ticks. Dylan juggles with a boyish persistence, trying to coax a smile from Heather, who sits staring blankly at her newspaper. The effort is comic at first, his tricks bumbling and bright, but something hovers just beyond reach. The clock keeps watch over them, its steady hands a reminder that time itself is part of the story and later those hands will be shifted back and forward, as if memory could be rewound or hurried on.

From there, the story unspools across two timelines. The young lovers meet by chance in a supermarket, a tin of beans passed between them like fate disguised in groceries. What follows is a rush of play, flirtation and trust and mirroring of past and future selves: a grace of bodies tumbling in turn in acrobatic rolls down a dune (my favourite part), juggling that becomes courtship, a hand caught mid-fall that steadies into intimacy. At one point they build a precarious human pyramid, the kind of trick that depends utterly on balance and trust, before collapsing back into laughter. A clowning streak runs through their encounters, never undermining the tenderness but grounding it.

Between the older couple there is both tenderness and the shadow of dissonance. A breakfast ritual slips into confusion when incongruous objects are placed into the bowl. The older Heather steadies the older Dylan as though her whole frame has become scaffold and anchor. A chair becomes a barrier between them, a piece of furniture suddenly charged with all the frustration of not being able to connect. At another point the younger couple take shelter under an umbrella as the older Dylan rains down sand from above. The phrase "brain like a sieve" springs to mind, and it occurs to me here that the umbrella is a sieve is upturned and lined with memories as a barrier, but while memory gives some respite and shelter, ultimately it cannot stop the downpour. 

And then, in a moment of startling delicacy, a single feather is set adrift. Audience members in the front rows lean forward and puff it back into the air. What might have been a standard clown gag with a balloon became something else: a reminder that memory is sustained not by weight but by breath, by the lightness of being recalled and retold. Without that, it will simply drift away.

The performances are finely tuned. Myles MacDonald’s older Dylan clowns with a fumbling sweetness that makes the moments of forgetfulness hit harder. Dilly Taylor’s older Heather holds her ground with a resigned compassion, her body taut with both love and weariness. Álvaro Grande’s young Dylan brims with physical energy, throwing himself into acrobatics with a kind of reckless joy, while Ebony Gumbs’s young Heather moves with lyric grace, her aerial sequences suspending her between flight and rootedness. Together they create a dialogue across time, a sense of selves that are continuous and fractured all at once.

At one point, the younger and older pairs shadow one another so closely it feels as though memory itself has conjured them, doubling across generations. It made me think not only of my parents but of my son too. Just this weekend a cousin over supper remarked not only on how much my son resembles his father, but also how the way he and his girlfriend were interacting reminded her of us. That doubling of likeness, gestures, and intimacies felt like an echo of what unfolded on stage, where love and memory ripple forward even as they return.

The sand itself is both material and metaphor, and the most striking image comes near the end, when the older Dylan juggles balls that crumble in his hands, grains scattering in concentric circles as he whirls them round. It crystallises the whole piece in one gesture: beauty dissolving even as you try to hold it, “like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel.” That line, from the song The Windmills of Your Mind, came back to me on another journey to Mum’s this summer, when a cover by Jacqui Dankworth (daughter of Cleo Laine and Jonny Dankworth) played on the radio in the home stretch. Her version, with a flamenco-style improvisation that broke the song apart mid-way through, remade it into something both yearning and unsettled. The lyrics turn on a single image. That was Sand... lingering in the way love and memory ripple forward, keeping us connected as the seasons turn, and reminding us that, like a feather on a breath, what we share keeps us uplifted.

Footage of show and audience feedback:  click here
Photography: Roy Riley www.kookensemble.com

Chapter 224: On Cloud Swings in Life and Sturgeon Moons

Under the Sturgeon Moon

“Lucy, if I gave you the sun and the moon, you’d ask for the stars as well,” Mum used to say.

This weekend, under the Sturgeon full moon, her words have been looping in my head like an artist on a cloud swing, because sometimes I really do ask for it all.

This morning, I waved off an old school friend flying back to teach in China. She brought a copy of Orbital by Samantha Harvey and a box of Krispy Kreme “Saturn rings” for the family. We ate them talking, as ever, about life, love, and the universe. She recalled a moment of connection in China when she realised the same sun shining there was shining here in the UK.

I know that feeling. Three years ago to the day, I stood in moonlight on a beach in southern Spain after hearing from my sister that our father had died. Xavier and our youngest came with me to the shore. We looked out across the water to Tangiers, the same moon over us as over him, the same moon that had watched over him when he stood on that beach seventy years earlier, newly engaged.

In a recent homily, or maybe a podcast, my mind slips, came this question: When have you stepped into the unknown and it was a disaster?

The answer, if you’ve ever trusted the net, the water, the loving force beneath it all, is never. From the first time I stepped off the trapeze platform at National Circus, or published my first blog post, to setting sail from La Rochelle and somehow ending up in Sydney Harbour two years later, the pattern’s the same: fear, superseded by trust, that carries you through challenge and leads ultimately to joy, or at the very least the quiet satisfaction of survival.

Friday night’s adventure was a Full Moon swim at Shepperton Lake. Carolyn and I drove there in my “teenage Mini,” as old as my children and still full of magic. She had grown up just ten minutes away, so we crawled through rush hour revisiting her childhood haunts until the lake appeared, luminous under a setting sun.

No moon yet, but the water shimmered like glass. We slipped in and swam towards the blazing light, familiar yet unheimlich, uncanny. I could picture Dad there, ever the water-lover, saying, “This is the life,” heading towards the ultimate source of all.

The last ones out, we emerged giddy with laughter and sheer joy. Half a dozen of us, part of the “Tooting Tits,” an open-water sisterhood of sirens, shared lentil and caviar-flavoured crisps in true sturgeon spirit.

The moon finally appeared later, as I walked halfway down our street, bright, whole, and watching. I thought: You’re the same moon from Tarifa, from every thus. Like Tweedy in Giffords Circus: Moon Songs, I felt the clownish comfort of continuity.

Sunday brought an unexpected hangover from entertaining friends. I missed morning Mass, curling up instead with The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a story of love, loss, and survival. It reminded me of a friend’s father, a gentle man who had survived a Japanese POW camp. I wonder if that gentleness came from having looked into the void and stepped back.

In the book, the protagonist copies to his lost love: You burn me, you burn me. It recalled the jisei, the Japanese death poems that distil life’s impermanence into beauty. I understand that yearning to have it all, the sun, the moon, the stars. But our family motto reminds me: I shine, not burn.

It’s a delicate balancing act.

Yesterday morning, before my friend arrived, I finished We Are Still Here by Lamorna Ash, luminous writing, poetry in prose. She explores her bisexual Gen Z identity, faith, and performance. A young Quaker challenges her: is she commodifying her journey?

I felt the echo. Years ago, I questioned my right to write about circus, my makeshift religion when I’d felt distant from Faith with a capital F. Circus was my devotion, my discipline, my daring. It still is, part of my ongoing pilgrimage.

We made it to evening Mass, lighting a candle for Dad in the Lady Chapel. I thought of Stella Maris, Our Lady, Star of the Sea, and of Yemayá, patron saint aboard La Cigale, our boat, her envoys the dolphins that guided us at sea.

Ritual is its own trapeze act. In morning Mass, a hymn can send me swinging back to childhood, Mum and Dad beside me. Sometimes the sensation is so vivid I have to look up to the golden dove in the cupola and blink back tears.

Dad never had Alzheimer’s, though he lost short-term memory. That meant I could tell him the same circus or sailing stories again and again, honing the rhythm until he’d beam, “Did you really? Well, I never!” The best captive audience.

That last summer, I even brought my harp to play for him, still harping on in every sense.

Now, after a year’s enforced sabbatical for back surgery, I’m preparing to return to teaching, the job I love, the job that once broke me. But a lesser-known family motto I recently discovered reminds me: Broken, I rise, Fracta surgo.

Circus performers learn that lesson early, just look up #circushurts.

The night before the full moon, I dreamed of a tunnel, a pitch-black slide that opened onto a game with red and green bowling balls. The words in my head were, Just roll with it, baby. Only later did I learn that the Sturgeon Moon is also called the Green Corn or Red Moon. Perhaps the dream was echoing that, or maybe it was the buoys at Shepperton Lake, the red and green markers guiding our way through dark water. that were surfacing again in memory.

The arrival of the moon is said to mark  abundance and gratitude, a time to give thanks for what already is and release a few wishes to the deep.

So I’m giving thanks, imagining my yearnings already realised, and letting my inner Barnum rise again.

And you, reader, what do you wonder under this same moon?

Perhaps your question drifts into the night like a jisei, catching in silver light before dissolving into dark.

This is the life, on a boat called Serendipity, with a “dark and stormy”🍸  on the side. Cheers!

Chapter 223: Harping on about Circus and Happy St Patrick's Day!

Circus is a jealous bitch.

Early in my circus obsession, Irish harpist Ursula Burns — in Tumble Circus' show "Damn the Circus!"  — offered this blunt truth on the seduction and curse of circus. It struck a chord and landed with the subtlety of a slapstick pie in the face. Thinking back to it now, I have also come across empresario Henry Ringling’s observation that this bitch is "a wench, a ravening hag who sucks your vitality as a vampire drinks blood... wrecking homes, ruining bodies, and destroying the happiness of loved ones. And yet, I love her as I love nothing else on earth." A bit extreme? Maybe. But also accurate.

To understand why this resonated, I have to rewind to a brief encounter back in 2012 that inadvertently hurtled me into the arms of the circus. It was a couple of months after having my third child. Stretched beyond words, I agreed to hire a French au pair to help over the long summer holidays. I thought I was hiring a gallic Marie Poppins; instead, I ended up with a cross between Carla Bruni and Single White Female—but that’s another story. Finally, my husband got the picture and whisked me away for a date night. Going off to see The Hunger Games may not strike you as an obvious choice of romantic movies, but after a summer of pure survival mode, I needed to watch someone strong, someone fierce, winning at life — already, perhaps, a part of me was searching for that inner circus strongwoman.

As we approached Leicester Square, a huge crowd had gathered for some premiere at another cinema, and somehow, I found myself swept into the throng and next to Colin Farrell—making small talk, taking a blurred selfie of the pair of us, laughing, my turn of phrase relaxed into his Dublin brogue. "Will you look at that, Colin? It’s all blurred! I guess I’m just nervous. You see, I don’t get out much…" Dressed up to the nines in a favorite Victoria’s Secret dress paired with killer Louboutins, I get that he found that a little hard to believe. Then three little words from my husband brought me back. "Lucy. Come. Now." But that longing for more stomach flips continued as I spent the evening watching Jennifer Lawrence take tumbles and risk all as Katniss Everdeen. And then, like a lightning bolt, it struck me: I would learn to fly on a trapeze.

I spent the next five years charting where that quest led, swept up in the thrill of it all—until the circus, with its endless flips and flights, began seeping into every corner of our lives. The writing as much as the practice became an all-consuming passion, and marriage started to feel like a juggling act with too many balls in the air.

And so it was, before we lost our footing completely, my husband and I with our three children, cast off, setting sail for a life untethered—"throwing off the bowlines, leaving safe harbor behind," and chasing our wildest dream. For two years, we circus-navigated the globe on La Cigale, clocking up over 25,000 nautical miles in the process. And that, again, is another story. Like one possessed, I have legion…

Now, three weeks away from a simple yet life-changing back operation, after two years of managing chronic pain, I am asking myself the question again: What dare I dream? Clearing out my filing cabinet to carve out space and order my thoughts this morning, I came across my Irish passport and an Éire-ribbon with a golden harp on it. I pinned it on, while wrapping round my neck an emerald green scarf, a Bratog Bríde (blessed by St Brigid) for good measure. I went downstairs, and for the first time in six months, picked up my harp again. My fingers clunked up and down the scales, but gradually it feels like I am getting back in tune with life.

“Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future.” —David Whyte

Recently, I spent three hours attending an online seminar by the Irish poet David Whyte (See davidwhyte.com). His words on experiences of the "unordinary", the way he engaged with the sense of awe of the everyday in Jules Breton's painting of "The Song of the Lark", the gift of his own daughter's voice and his recitation of poems and observations impressed, stirring something familiar — the same call I felt when I first stepped into the circus, the same pull of community, of art, of shared experience. Circus isn’t just about performing; it’s about being fully present, about pushing through fear, about belonging to something bigger than yourself. Maybe it’s genetic. Maybe the touch of the Blarney Stone my Dublin-born Dad once kissed gets passed down from father to daughter. Or maybe those story-telling Southern Irish nuns who educated me for thirteen years have something to answer for. Either way, I long to fly again, and this time, I’ll do it through my words.

St. Patrick’s Day is the day to wonder that, one to celebrate the bold and the brave, the dreamers and the doers. What better time to raise a glass to those who fly high, who tumble and fall and get back up again? To the aerialists whose hands are calloused from rope burns, to the acrobats whose bodies bear the bruises of dedication, and the clowns who place their vulnerability centre stage. 

For the Irish in the circus, past and present, and for all who love the jealous bitch anyway—Sláinte!

Chapter 222: The Juggling Saint

 

Normally, the only thing I celebrate on 31st January each year is my sister’s birthday. But this year is a little different. A few weeks ago, I found myself in a school hall, listening to a headteacher introduce some professional training to staff. He began by showing us a picture of a juggler, a tightrope walker, and a magician’s hat and asked what they had in common.

Me! I thought. Obviously!  But nobody there knew me as "Lucy Loves Circus". Circus in general? Too obvious… what’s the trap?!  While I paused to consider, a hand shot up.

"Don Bosco!" came the confident (and correct) answer.

Wait — what?! I was both surprised and curious.

I had heard of Don Bosco before—an Italian priest famous for his work with disadvantaged and at-risk young people. "It is not enough for a child to be loved; they must know they are loved," is one of his key quotes. I was fortunate to experience that knowledge first-hand, both at home and at the two convent schools that educated me.

The first convent, though located in Sussex, was home to 26 Southern Irish Sisters of Mercy, and if you’ve ever watched Derry Girls—though set north of the border—you’ll get the gist in terms of sharp humour, no-nonsense wisdom, and plenty of stories about the lives of saints and miraculous happenings. They certainly had my measure. I can still hear our very own Sister Michael, declaring, "Lucy Young, get up off that wet grass this minute, or it'll be another little holiday you'll be wanting...!"

The second convent, run by IBVM sisters (now the Congregation of Jesus, CJ), had a different character—more progressive in style and approach. In place of the traditional habit and wimple, the sisters wore home clothes, with a simple cross quietly marking their vocation. Being introduced there to the writings of Anthony De Mello bringing together Eastern and Western Christian spirituality—prayer through yoga, breathwork, and meditation—made a lasting impression, as did the strong emphasis on thoughtful reflection and questioning. One of the sisters even taught me to gate vault on long country walks in the hills—my first experience of legs flying over a bar, long before trapeze.

Both schools had one thing in common—aside from the fact they were also staffed by lay people of both sexes—the nuns set the ethos. They were fiercely strong, opinionated women who had no qualms about speaking their minds, were fabulous raconteurs (raconteuses?!), and were devoted to the principle that faith seeks reason, to quote St. Anselm.

But back to today’s saint: Turin-born St. John Bosco (“Don” being the title for Italian priests), known as the juggling saint. A century before my own education, he pioneered teaching methods that were innovative for his time—combining reason, religion, and kindness, prioritizing prevention over punishment. As a boy, he had been fascinated by local carnivals and fairs, teaching himself to juggle, perform magic tricks, and cross a tightwire—skills he later used in the classroom to inspire his students and ignite their imaginations.

He founded the Salesians of Don Bosco, a religious order dedicated to education and vocational training for young people, particularly the poor, inspired in turn by St. Francis de Sales—the 16th-century saint renowned for his gentleness. And, fittingly, the patron saint of writers, journalists… and, I imagine, bloggers.

---

Playing around with ChatGPT the other evening, I tried generating an image to share with the Salesian school community I had met, celebrating their patron saint’s circus spirit on this his feast day. But the AI kept inserting macabre details—memento mori imagery, particularly skulls—despite my prompts to remove them.

ChatGPT’s algorithms had a point. A saint’s feast day commemorates the day they died rather than the day they were born. As I’ve just discovered—rather belatedly—their death is seen as their dies natalis ("birthday into heaven"), marking their entry into eternal life with God.

For me, the AI’s eerie insistence on memento mori wasn’t entirely out of place. Classical philosophers embraced it as a reminder that we all die—not to instill despair, but to sharpen our focus on what truly matters. Seneca used it to avoid procrastination. For Marcus Aurelius, it gave life purpose. Epictetus taught that by keeping death in mind, we free ourselves from unnecessary distractions.

However, wary of how this might land with pupils, I kept trying to edit out the skulls —getting increasingly frustrated with each prompt revision, culminating (sixth or seventh attempt) with an exasperated: “NO, NO, I SAID REMOVE THE BLOODY SKULLS!!! …please!” It still didn’t register. Maybe I was too polite. Or overdid the exclamations!

In the end, I took matters into my own hands—quite literally—transferring the image to PowerPoint and using some copy and paste to cover the unwanted details with flowers. While Don Bosco might have approved of my sleight of hand, it was probably not very Stoic.

---

My stubborn battle against macabre imagery reminded me of another meditation on impermanence. Recently, I listened to The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Bhuddist monk who was a Nobel Prize nominee (nominated by Martin Luther King) and Global Peace Prize Winner. He describes a practice among young monks in training: meditating on their own mortality—visualizing their bodies decomposing, flesh returning to the earth, until nothing remains but dust. Morbid as it sounds, such reflections lead not to fear, but to a deeper embrace of life. Carpe diem.

On that note, Don Bosco also urged: “Do good while you still have time.” That phrase has been on my mind lately, as I approach a milestone birthday and feel an increasing urgency to get my words out—especially as my back struggles to keep up with my energy levels, and I find myself on standby for surgery, a stark reminder of time’s passage.

So, in writing this, what began with a professional development anecdote has taken me on a diversion— one with all the fun of the fair! Teaching, in many ways, is its own kind of circus act. We juggle responsibilities—lesson planning, pastoral care, endless administrative tasks. We walk a tightrope—balancing discipline with encouragement, structure with spontaneity.

Doing a litte more exploring this week, I discovered the Circo Social Saltimbanqui in Córdoba, Argentina—a Salesian social circus that embodies Don Bosco's legacy by using circus arts to engage and uplift young people. This initiative not only preserves the spirit of Don Bosco's innovative educational methods but also resonates deeply with my own personal Trinity: All things Spanish-speaking, the circus arts and my own speculative pilgrimage of faith.

Reflecting on all this, I realize that the best educators are those who not only see the wonder in the world but also find creative ways to communicate and share it. Don Bosco's transformation of a childhood fascination into a life-changing philosophy serves as a powerful reminder of the impact that passion, when combined with purpose, can have on the lives of young people worldwide. 

Click here: Circo Social Saltambanqui