Finding Public Liability insurance as a circus performer or teacher in the UK by Charlie Hull

Running a Circus Workshop by Charlie Hull

Me and Alex arrived on the Wednesday evening to find Ian (Montegriffo, who runs Bungay) and a few others sat inside and around a tin barn in a farmer's yard. Not the most auspicious of starts really - previous years have been tented in a beautiful buttercup field but the dreaded Foot and Mouth put paid to that. Still, the campsite had a nice view and there was even another barn to park vehicles in. As it turned out the site was perfect, not the least because the farmer (Paul) who owned it was incredibly helpful and friendly, lending us the use of his (indoor) loo and shower amongst other things.

The tin barn proved to be a good venue after all, with a juggling area at one end and tables and chairs surrounding Ian's catering caravan at the other end, so you could sit, eat and drink and watch everyone play. As ever at Bungay the food Ian managed to conjure up from his caravan was tasty and cheap - you haven't lived till you've tried Ian's Banoffee Pie - and like last year we had a 'Sunday roast', complete with a beef option (supplied by the farmer who owns the usual venue - who's also called Paul - are all the farmers called Paul in Suffolk?) which was nice for us non-veggies. There was a pub down the road in case you fancied a change.

More people arrived during Thursday and Friday, including some from as far afield as Germany, France and Scotland - it may be a small convention, but once you've been once you'll probably want to go back. Nobody was really up for doing the Public Show on Friday so we rescheduled it for Saturday. The acts included:

• Alan (Oi! Shut it!) on stilts as compere
• me and Andy Shorts doing the classic 'cigarette takeout' passing routine - we dragged out the farmer who owned the site as a volunteer!
• Grant Goldie on diabolo, fluid as always
• Digby Marx (Mark Digby from Le La Les) with a bit of fire swinging and eating, very popular with the locals
• Dave, Helen, James and Ewan with some incredibly complicated
both-hands-star-with-a-missing-person passing routine, which also involved tequila
• Rene, Anton and Grant with a tennis ball and tube routine that was watchable mainly because they couldn't always agree which trick to do

Considering how laid back the whole event was it was pretty incredible a show happened at all - well done everyone! A big Gladiators session started just after the show which was great - let's do that at the BJC next year :-)

The rest of the days have begun to blur into one now, but special mention goes to....

• Rene and Simon's marathon Playstation 'Coli McCrae Rally' session, which started on Sunday night and went on until 9am Monday morning....
• A wonderful game involving a plastic elephant with a fan in it, a tube of plastic that fitted in the top, and hundreds of bits of coloured paper that you had to catch in nets. You had to be there....
• Banoffee Pie
• The farmer who owned the site lifting me up to the roof on a giant forklift to rig a trapeze
• The mice who lived inside the breeze block walls popping up once in a while for a look at the strange humans
• More wildlife - rabbits running across the drive, barn owls in the other barn, bats in the juggling barn...
• A trip to the seaside (Southwold) where we ate icecreams, skipped stones on the water, and laughed at Jaims trying to head a foam football that had been dipped in the sea and was somewhat damp
• Tequila fueled passing sessions. Someone explain Urban Terror Feed to me again please? Also, passing 3-count with one of Tarim's hands (the other was busy holding a bottle of beer)
• Lido Dice
• Doing the four-chairs-lying-on-other-people's-knees trick with four drunk people from the local village. Well, they liked it.
• The weather. A sprinkle of rain on the last morning but apart from that it was gorgeous - we have the sunburn to prove it
• A very very big firework let off at 2am on Sunday morning. I got paranoid that the locals would come and get us for spooking the sheep and had to go to bed. No idea why :-)
• Banoffee Pie
• People pitching in to help make some stilt trousers for Alan and Carrie - they had a gig on Sunday and had run out of time
• An electrical system that worked more by luck than judgement - I reckon that at one stage we had the following running:

Two fridges 3 500W halogen lights Another halogen spotlight A row of 60W lights in the barn The stereo TV and Playstation The lights in Ian's van Phone chargers and a battery charger

...off one 13A plug. Now I've got an electronic engineering degree and I seem to remember something about this being a bit dodgy....never mind, we didn't break anything. Apart from the plug which, er, welded itself into a socket....oops

For me the other special thing about a small convention like Bungay is the incredible generosity of spirit that is generated when a bunch of jugglers get together - we had people mucking in to help washing up, Jane and Anton's huge bag of board games available for everyone to use, Mark Digby spending a whole afternoon teaching juggling, trapeze and acro to a bunch of kids from the local village (who reciprocated by lending us some more Playstation games), hammocks in the corner, the usual pile of juggling kit for anyone to borrow, Ian being prepared to cook breakfast at 3pm for those who had only just got up...the whole event felt more like a week in the country with a group of close friends than any kind of official event. Where else can you leave a fiver lying on the floor for three days until someone eventually picks it up and gives it to Ian for safe keeping :-) ?

On Monday we got up, packed the tent away and drove back to Cambridge with smiles on our faces. Alex managed to get six catches of three clubs during the week and is going to try and learn to pass during the EJC. I've got a couple of new club tricks and a raw patch on my left hand from too much 4 club practise. We're browner and probably slightly plumper (did I mention the Banoffee Pie?).

Thanks to Ian and everyone else for a wonderful week. Now how to I register for next year?

Charlie
http://www.circusarts.org.uk