The Last Stand - Ashburton

The tour had felt long, and yet all of a sudden it was almost over. The spirit of the circus had been lifted as all of the Ring Master's family had come down to join the circus over the school holidays. Our cast instantly doubled in size with our youngest performer being only 8 years old. The rain had cleared up and the sun was shining, and we had time to relax a little as Ashburton was a two week stand.

Luke and I were leaving a couple of weeks early as we had commitments over in Australia. The rest of the crew would be carrying on to Christchurch for their last stand.
It is a tradition in circus to make the last show as entertaining, and as difficult as possible for your cast mates - and most were already planning the cast pranks for the final show.. Apparently, it was decided that Luke and I truly deserved to get some last show prank action, even though we were not going to be there for the final show..

Just before the show, everyone was acting suspicious - I twigged that we were likely to be 'last showed' but had no idea what the cheeky scoundrels were up to. I was waylaid on my stilts out the front of the tent - just long enough it seems for the rigger to change the height of my trapeze by raising it 30cm - just high enough to make the routine hard!

I walked into the ring, and glanced over at the sound desk - the entire cast were standing there, giggling as I reached out to my uncomfortably high trapeze.
After my act, I watched as everyone raced back out to watch Luke.. the guys had taken his music and sped it up by about 20% so his juggling routine was in fast forward! It was hilarious to watch, and amazingly he carried the routine out to the end, scoring a round of applause from the cast and audience alike when he returned backstage.

All through the show they had set little glitches for us to 'enjoy', and as if that wasn't enough, when we returned to the car to drive away it seemed that they had hidden hundreds of grape drinks through ALL of our luggage, doubling it's weight and leaving us with the lovely experience of discovering grape drinks for days to come!

..little did they know, that they were not the only ones hiding grape drinks that day.. :-p