The Circus Rolls In

Often, when I am working on a piece, a story will be unfolding in my life that I find myself relaying onto the work. This is what happened with The Circus Rolls On. Some time ago, I wrote a sketch from my Welsh childhood about the annual charabanc (bus) mystery tour from our village, and I illustrated it with a three-dimensional ceramic scene. In the hopes of jogging my childhood memory, I wrote to my mother asking for her recollections of the Johnsons (not their real name), one of the more colourful but hapless families in the village. I had remembered that when Arthur Johnson had a new suit, he would be sent to knock on doors of families in the village to show it off. When he arrived at our house my mother would say, “Dûw Arthur, there’s posh you look!" And she would press half-a crown into his palm. By the time Arthur had finished his tour of the village, his suit was virtually paid for. My mother did not reply to my query about the Johnsons, but she did mention it to my brother. He wrote to me saying, somewhat ominously, that if I told him what I know about Arthur, he would tell me what he knew. I replied in a mundane letter about the weather and the children that the main thing I remembered about Arthur was the secret Russian information implanted in a pellet in his knee: a lighthearted reference to the time when my brother, in his early teens, had inadvertently shot Arthur in the knee with an air rifle when they were trying to shoot crows, and I, being a sensitive child, was trying to sabotage their efforts. A while after receiving my letter, my brother came to the attention of Special Branch. They took him away and locked him up overnight while they raided his Welsh hillside farm looking for bombs or literature on how to make them. They found nothing. I wasn’t sure at whom these purported bombs were to have been lobbed until my mother wrote to say that my brother had sent a rather silly letter about the European Economic Community’s milk quotas to the Min. of Ag and Fish (the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries) but she felt that they had over-reacted in ”sending a bull-dozer to crack a nut.” At that time many people in Britain were sympathetic to the plight of British farmers in the European Economic Community. As my mother put it, “The quotas have caused farmers to pour churns of milk down roads, and even once, temporarily, to kidnap a Minister!” And now, apparently, it has ‘caused’ my brother to write A Letter. But to get back to Arthur. As I said, Special Branch did not find any bombs or recipes for them. They did, however, find my letter referring to the secret Russian information in the pellet lodged in Arthur’s knee. In fact, my letter was among the very few items they took with them from my brother’s farm. Special Branch got very excited and wanted to know who Arthur and I were. Perhaps I will now, at last, get an answer to my query about the Johnson family that my mother and brother never got around to sending to me. As for who I am, I think it is about time that my brother learned to describe me in other ways than “the wife of…” as he did to special Branch especially because before being able to start his job with the Canadian Government in Ottawa both my husband and I had needed top security clearance from the Canadian High Commission in London where we then lived. In light of all this we thought it would be prudent to have a word with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CISIS) in case Special Branch got in touch with them, and so told them this sorry tale. Fortunately CISIS could see the funny side and it all ended there. Since I was making The Circus Rolls On while this saga was unfolding, I think it will be easily understood why I incorporated CSIS into the piece, and why I added a banner to the top of the circus tent reading “All performers security cleared by CSIS, except for Pinco, the sapient pig, who is currently under investigation.” Clearly this poor benighted pig is my alter-ego. Caryn Nuttall July 1988