My parents always used to be mad at me for being such a reluctant and unappreciative circus goer but how could I explain it was the poor animals and the clowns I hated. I was so saddened by the antics that elephants and lions were clearly to me as a very empathic child, being made to endure or suffer through, obviously out of fear. The way these creatures cringed and watched fearfully their “trainers” was at once obvious to me a result of abuse and mistreatment and I have always been very empathic especially towards animals. When animal acts like this were banned in circuses as they have been many places now worldwide, the word of circuses became once again something I began to enter. BUT there to my horror was the situation as stated with clowns. My purpose for going to the circus is for seeing great skills and talents displayed proudly and audaciously in front of a live audience. It is for entertainment which makes one gasp in surprise or clap hands instinctively or exclaim. It is not to be annoyed and trolled by freaky people dressed as if they were blind people who chose their attire from the charity shop’s unsold rejects and making a deliberate spectacle of themselves to draw attention to nothing more than their own weirdness. It is my hope that Clowns too will eventually be banned. Then circuses will have attained a moral footing worthy of the image they wish to project. Remove these creepy, disruptive and untrustworthy predators from the places we wish to take our children safely and enjoyably.

I am given hope by the fact clowns are becoming increasingly unpopular as their true natures begin to dawn on the public. Once we were laughed at for being caulrophobes but now it is something one mentions casually and unashamedly to most. Apparently clown rejection is growing and never been higher. This is evolution of civilisation at work. One of the few signs of improvement one sees perhaps but promising. Just as we came to embrace rights for women, children and animals, even as we in theory at least embrace better attitudes to the environment, even so we gradually awaken to clowns and eliminate them from our lives. They are a holdout from the Dark Ages. They were common at fairs and any large public gathering but were not the centres of laughter and celebration nor symbolic of it or the Spring as some fools will maintain. Absolutely NOT! They dressed even then strangely and acted in silly ways to attract attention. They were the pickpockets and kidnappers. Whilst one or several were distracting your attention, his mates would be snatching your purse or child. The person they wish to usurp in history, to hide their wicked origins, was called “The Green Man” and he is actually the patron of the Fireworks Profession. He would march ceremoniously and laughingly at the head of the procession for the Spring festival and showering about and all the way with sparks from a burning branch. His was the task to symbolise the joy and new life springing forth from the cold and to lead the merriment forwards.

Those who reject clowns do not fear them, mostly. Some may, we’re not all equally courageous I realise. I too would probably be nervous if I was confronted with a gang of them. They can be unpredictable and with all those big pockets and things could be carrying any sort of weapons too. But I wouldn’t be going around alone in areas where gangs of clowns were likely to roam so it isn’t something which keeps me awake at night. Not fear but a strong intuitive sense of the essential “wrongness” of the things and sometimes as in my case a solid case of political and moral stance and one which I am prepared to back up with a sound and legitimate argument. As for this “Clown Hotel” short of attracting clowns and corralling them in one place so they could be dispatched with a box of matches I can’t see any wholesome uses. Whoever built it should be condemned to public scorn and ignominy and the structure itself is an abomination which I wouldn’t want to share a continent with.