The Day I ran away with the Circus.

We moved to Bath during the War and I later started school at St. John's Catholic School in town that was next to the Church. This was just off the South Parade across the River Avon from the Recreation Ground, the home of Bath Rugby. The teachers were Nuns from a French Order and lay teachers, mostly ladies. The boys and girls came from all layers of society the common denominator being Roman Catholicism but not the narrow bigotry of Irish Catholicism so there were all sorts in the pupils.

I had two main friends at the school. There was Rob Elphick who suffered from epilepsy and would have petit mal attacks umpteen times a day. It did not worry me I just hoped that he didn't have an attack up a tree! [Actually I did cope with that.] We had fun; he was great at inventing stuff and he had dual nationality with his Dad and Mum being American. His Dad also worked with the Admiralty,and, as he spoke and wrote technical German, he worked on captured German Naval documents and later debriefed German scientists.

My other good friend was a boy called Brian Cottle who lived up at Whiteway near the cemetery and I saw him at school and at the odd time after a burial as I was an altar-boy [more on that later.] His Dad had been a soldier. His Mum died too but before mine as she had bowel cancer. I was always envious of his boots. Poorer families would put their lads into heavy boots with a load of steel segs and tips on the sole and heel. This was great for creating a load of sparks when you scuffed! Magic!

Cottle and I had another great trick, we used to get dry ice [solid CO2] from the yard at Bath Station and keep in pieces of cloth and bring it back to school. We would then press a penny to the ice and make it scream or put a piece in our mouths a blow smoke. Yep, I now realize how dangerous that was but that is how we were, rascals.

Cottle and I heard that the circus was coming to town to set up in the Royal Victoria Park and it was coming via the railway. We heard that the elephants and some other parts of the circus would parade through the town to the park - that was it, we decided to mooch from school and join the circus. This was in the days before PC and all that stuff so the lion tamer and elephant man actually agreed to us tagging on as long as we did as we were told. We were over the moon! and so we walked alongside these men through the town with great pride. We were almost through when the elephants decided to poo. Now pachyderms are total vegetarians and produce the perfect manure in style and I mean style. This was dung in lumps like cannonballs! We were delighted, Cottle and I, here were these great beasts pooing in the City of Bath. But it got even better for out came some old guys, keen gardeners, armed with buckets and shovels to pick up this perfect manure and they promptly got into a racket, it was almost fisticuffs! This was fun! we laughed fitted to bust.

We later helped with the setting up of the big top and this proved really hard work. We got very hungry, tired, and decided that we did not want to run away anymore so went home and had tea. Cottle and I were famous for a week but then something else took over. I have never forgotten those old boys fighting over that manure. This all took place in 1946 or 1947. I cannot remember if it was Chipperfields or Bertram Mills Circus. The picture is Victoria Park.

Boyhood was fun.