Just before the second lockdown began, which was going to end last night, the circus were due in town. The colourful Big Top was in place, a posse of caravans parked close by and now all they needed was an audience. That very day Leo, one of our pet cats, and not one to stand on ceremony, decided to wake me at an ungodly hour for his breakfast. I slid ungracefully out of my slumber, almost falling on top of Luna, pet cat two, and fed them a full cat English without fries. Having been awakened so early, I decided to go for a morning stroll. The birdsong was heavenly, the deserted streets a haven of tranquillity, apart from the occasional intrusion of an urban fox in search of easy pickings. The sunrise meanwhile was a picture of melancholic beauty. The icing on the cake was the frost, giving the lush grass a shimmering serenity. I chose to do as Wordsworth advised and carried on wandering lonely as a cloud.
Some of the shop windows were already in a festive frame of mind and the fairy lights guided me to the top of the high street where I turned and breathed in the view up onto the downs. My strolling led me all the way to the park where the Big Top stood proud but forlorn. How so I asked myself and as I did, my eyes caught sight of a solitary figure sat on a bench but shrouded slightly in the morning mist. I approached tentatively, early risers often prefer their solitude, and as I neared, I made out that this person was dressed in a costume. Initially I thought clown but in fact it was a Pierrot, a key character of pantomime and commedia dell’arte with origins in the late seventeenth-century. Now spotted in suburbia. His all white face accentuated the sad black teardrops. I wanted to give him a cuddle but before I could, he arose and sloped off in silence leaving the paper as a memento mori. Alas, this was the day the circus cried and died, caught in the grip of pandemic panic. Scrawled across the publicity leaflets in red, for that is what the paper was, was the word “cancelled”. “Isn’t it rich? Are we a pair? Me here at last on the ground, You in mid-air, Where are the clowns?” Alone in parks and elsewhere in hordes.
It’s not often that I’m left speechless but this unexpected silent encounter brought home the existential horror of Covid and the impact across all areas of our lives. When I returned home, I turned to tea and the radio for comfort. The news bulletin brought little cheer and the clip of Boris Johnson talking about the impending lockdown with spurious talk of “evidence and science” offering no succour to the morning gloom. The language has surreptitiously morphed from the urgent validity of March, to the more recent apocalyptic desperation, with scientists and politicians dancing to different tunes.
“Now if there’s a smile on my face, it’s only there trying to fool the public,” Smokey Robinson sang these words and today they are more poignant than ever. But the real question for you and I is whether you feel like you are being fooled or believe that the newly imposed tiers, which began today, are the way ahead and out of this global malaise. Personally, I’m all tiered out, which in reality are another lockdown, a semantic ruse. As Abraham Lincoln said: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Unless you are a clown. “But where are the clowns? Send in the clowns. Don’t bother, they’re here.” Here, there and everywhere. So let us include a new clause in the tiers, If in Doubt, Leave it Out and allow common sense to prosper.
And going back to my sighting of the disconsolate Pierrot let us not forget…“Now they’re some sad things known to man, But ain’t too much sadder than, The tears of a clown when there’s no one around.” But these tiers are one clown joke too far.
