Chapter 236: Take That... and Circus!

"Mark, meet Lucy, she loves circus and goes to trapeze classes." A mutual friend waved me over to jump the coffee queue at Nero's to join them. That was over ten years ago now, but it comes back to me now in the form of a zeitgeist. Mark said he liked trapeze too, and had some experience himself. There it was, an open door, an invitation. And instead of walking through it, and asking questions, I launched into an enthusiastic monologue about the oversubscribed classes at the National Circus, the history of Circus Space, and my top tips for him enrolling there, then grabbed my coffee and dashed out, with the feeling I had just embarrassed myself, but not quite sure why.

It was only as the caffeine kicked in that the penny dropped.

Of course Mark Owen knew about circus. It was the theme of the whole sell-out Take That tour. Turns out not only had I skipped one queue, I missed another cue entirely. I felt like a muppet. A well-meaning, trapeze-enthusiast muppet at the beginning of a circus journey, who had just lectured a superstar with a wealth of experience about how to book an aerial beginners class...

Maybe I hadn't clicked sooner because for the Mum on the school coffee run this was all out of context. The world of Take That had hitherto belonged to the sixth form common room at school. I remember us all watching an entire concert on television, the kind of communal experience that doesn't really exist anymore, everyone on the same sofa, at the same moment, singing our hearts out, no scrolling away.

A couple of years after the Nero's encounter I found myself at the 02 for The Circus Live, a girls' night out with all the giggles that entails. It was brilliant in the truest sense of the word, dazzling, luminous, joyful. Cloudswing. Pyrotechnics blazing through Relight My Fire. A spinning globe with aerialist Katherine Arnold suspended beneath it, the whole world turning. A duo act in red silks. Luminous birds thrown against darkness. Clown Joe Dieffenbacher in a hamster wheel, The Engineer who magicked up a flying bike that carried the singers aloft. The kind of show that makes you understand why human beings have always gathered in the dark to watch other human beings do impossible things.

I cannot believe I never wrote about it. In retrospect, now I get it. That same month I had celebrated a wedding anniversary and a family wedding, and when Giffords Circus came to town I went to that too, which did make it onto the blog, the only post that month in 2015. And then there was the small matter of hosting a Moulin Rouge party for my husband's fortieth a couple of days after the concert. I had opened the door early that evening, for a pre-party cocktail in the garden, for neighbours en route to a West End cabaret. They turned up accompanied by their friend, actor Lesley Joseph, who took one look at me dolled up to the nines, choker, corset, red rose in my hair, backlit by red light from a flashing windmill sign and declared "Ooh, I'm not sure I should enter this den of iniquity!" Birds of a Feather, indeed. Take That!

And now Take That have brought the greatest show back, outdoors this summer, and I cannot be there. But this is the life we are given... and so I am living it vicariously, through the eyes and footage of those who are.

It was Instagram that first put the concert on my radar, as I follow tightwire walker Ellis Grover, whose footage stopped me mid-scroll. There he was, moving across the wire to Patience, that song about waiting and trust and things arriving in their own time, performing with the kind of grace and generosity that makes you forget you are watching something technically terrifying. He does stunts that should not be possible and makes them look like conversation. I have never seen him perform live. Watching the footage, I felt that particular wistfulness of the thing you almost had, the show you nearly booked, conversation cues not followed, the stories left unwritten.

Cirque Bijou, whose work I have long admired, are among those who provided acts for the tour. Outdoors, on that scale, it looks phenomenal. A Guardian review (click here) described a  a mechanical elephant emerging from beneath the stage, giant sky blue air balloon hovering over the crowd, fire-breathers, trampolinists, a hair-hanging aerialist, and during Relight My Fire, everyone on stage apparently holding a naked flame of some description. There was Joe Dieffenbacher again, making light of being stuck in an air balloon when it failed to descend on cue. That, more than any planned spectacle, is the art of the clown: meeting the unexpected and rolling with it.

What struck me as well was the encore of gratitude, with Take That thanking the audience for giving them the opportunity to perform and making the dream possible. 

I understand that impulse completely. This week as my blog quietly pushes past 350,000 hits, I find myself wondering about 350,000 moments of someone choosing to follow this meandering circus journey. I wonder about my readers the way perfomers on stage might think about an audience they never get to see, beyond the lights, out there somewhere, just out of sight...

The Osho Zen tarot card I keep drawing at the moment is called Slowing Down. The universe, as ever, is not being subtle. And perhaps there is something right about watching this particular tour from a distance, through Joe Dieffenbacher aloft in his balloon, through a crowd singing Rule the World with their phone lights held up. 

And through the feed of Ellis Grover, walking the wire to Patience.

Just that. One step at a time.

Photo credit above: Ellis Grover @ellisgrover
Top photo: Dan Reid
Triptych: my own, 2015 and current tour courtesy of Joe Dieffenbacher @joeclownphysicalcomedy - fan photographs sourced via Facebook; original photographers unknown

Katharine Arnold @katherinearnold
Cirque Bijou @cirquebijou
Take That @takethat / @takethatlive