Colm O'Regan: I'm glad my kids don't have to see unhappy animals at the circus

Watching our two kids experience the circus for the first time was just lovely. It was fairly different to the circus in Dripsey I went to years ago

"There were people cycling on the high-wire, high enough for us to look through our fingers, people swinging each other around with their teeth."

We went to the circus last week. The children’s first time. There’s something about the circus arriving to town that makes you feel like you’re in a kid’s mystery book and something is afoot. The Famous Five had an adventure with a circus in Five Go Off In A Caravan. (Go off as in head away, not start to smell or lose the rag) FGOIAC gave Enid Blyton a chance to express society’s (okay her) worst fears about circus types like Lou and Tiger Dan and their general dodginess.

I’m pleased to say the Circus Extreme was most definitely not infamous jewel thieves whose camp was above a cave storing their loot. They don’t need to.

Their treasure is the smiles on children’s’ faces (sorry.) Although they also require you to buy a ticket. But watching our two watch it for the first time was just lovely. A level of concentration usually reserved for Bluey, but multiplied, and a group experience and in a big tent.

Years ago there circus came to Dripsey. It was a night in early summer and it was in Feeney’s field behind the pub. It was noteworthy because not much came to Dripsey in those days except the AI man and the man to read the meter. The only thing I can remember from it was a strong man. He did the normal strongman things like lifting things with his teeth.

Then he did the Hurt Himself things. Lying on nails — which apparently is doable. He walked on broken glass. I wasn’t close enough to tell but apparently a thick bed of broken wine glass bottles are optimum for walking on. The shards are less ‘shardy’. He ate lightbulbs.

The bit that most stuck in my mind is where he just appeared to cut himself with stuff. He had a knife that he used to slice around his bicep and he was doing some torso work as well.

I know these things are supposed to be all illusion and smoke and mirrors, but I’m almost certain he was just cutting himself deeply with a knife. At school the following day someone said someone’s brother saw him after backstage all bloodily bandaged up.

Maybe I’m wrong but I wonder if one day he met a fellow self-mutilation act and he’ll find out “you know everyone else just does it by illusion?”

There was an Italian circus down at the Marina in 1997. Probably the start of the last hurrah for Unhappy Animal Circus. I certainly felt it. I’d seen enough Captain Planet by this stage to know the animals weren’t there by choice. They had a lot of animals. It was like some sort of menagerie show for a bored Tudor king. They even had a rhino running around the ring. That was it. He just ran around. As if he had reached an agreement that if this was all he was asked to do he wouldn’t punch a rhino shaped hole in the audience. Which he totally could have any time. I really didn’t feel rhino-proof.

Circus Extreme had no rhinos. They did have a fella fire-eating on a burning SUV.

They had motorcyclists driving around the inside of a sphere and then flying through the air sound tracked by a fella playing highway to hell on electric guitar.

Climate change protestors should sign them up. It was very metaphorical.

There were people cycling on the high-wire, high enough for us to look through our fingers, people swinging each other around with their teeth.

There was jeopardy. Tension.

In the dark, in a circle, clapping and shouting and screaming fuelled by sugar, demanding more candy floss.

And I think my children were excited too.