The Circus Comes to Town

The circus has come to Crapchester!  Again.  They were here last year, as well, but this time they've been given a better pitch in the park across the road from me.  Last time they were on the smaller green, behind the trees, where the kids usually do their after-school football skills classes.  This year, though, they get to pitch their tent on the main green.  To be honest, it's pretty disappointing to look at: it's just a tent and some caravans.  No sideshows full of freaks or cages full of animals.  It's one of those animal-free circuses.  Wokery gone mad.  The lack of animals is disappointing as it means that I can't run through the park, waving my hands and shouting 'The lions are loose!  Run for your lives!  The lions are loose!', in the hope of creating mass panic.  I'd quite like to see those bloody joggers and dog walkers who clutter the park up desperately trying to climb trees for safety, or hiding behind the climbing frame in the kiddies' playground, or trying to scale the park wall in desperate bids for safety. 

But can a circus be any good without animals?  I mean, they'd just have to rely on things like trapeze artists and, well, more trapeze artists.  And the clowns.  Bloody clowns.  Now, I'm not one of those people who has some sort of phobia about clowns.  I don't find them scary or menacing.  It's just that I don't find them remotely funny.  There are only so many times you can see someone kicked in the arse, have a pie thrown in their face, tripped over or have a bucket of water thrown over them before it ceases to be amusing.  Not even driving a car that falls apart makes me laugh, (I've done it for real myself too many times).  I just want to shout 'Be funnier!' at them.  Maybe these animal-less circuses could instead have people dressed as animals to perform in them, instead.  They could have people dressed as lions and tigers jumping through hoops and stuff, while a 'lion tamer' cracks a whip and thrusts a chair at them, (big cats, apparently, are afraid of chairs).  The elephants might be a bit trickier, you'd probably need at least four people in the suit, two pairs for the legs, with the others on their shoulders to do stuff like operate the tail, ears and trunk.  You could also have more dangerous animal acts as no real animals could be at risk - gorillas fighting bears, that sort of thing.  You know, the more I think about this, the better it seems - it could herald a whole new concept for circuses...