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Circus Family Nell Gifford was a student at Oxford University, who at the age of 18 was bitten by the circus bug. When she married Toti, a landscape designer, they decided to start their own circus. Alex Forrest joined them in their wagon at Frampton on Severn in Gloucestershire while they were on tour ...  photo by James Waddell |
Circus life on the road - moving in convoy from site to site, living cheek by jowl with the troupe and animals in the acts - is thought to be a specialist way of living best left to those with peripatetic blood in their veins.
But Nell and Toti's 'Giffords Circus' is unusual. Inspired by the village shows from the 1930’s, Nell and Toti live out the theme. Their home (year round) is a wagon built by Toti in the same style.
The wagon is tiny, compulsively tidy, and 'extremely cosy' in winter. The circus season is twenty weeks, so the summer with it's a burst of excitement and exposure is followed by a 'massive come down' of winter when life gets back to some semblance of normality, including privacy.
Nell went out to work in her sister-in-law's American family circus when she was 18, and was 'completely bitten by the limelight'. A performance on an elephant in Glasgow confirmed her passion. She says,
'People think that its a free life, but its not really free at all. It's quite drilled, it's very repetitive, you have to be quite disciplined and it's very intense. The freedom of it is actually in the ring, and if you can improvise a bit in your act, that's the freedom' and that's an amazing feeling.
Nell studied English Lit at Oxford before joining the circus. Nell thinks that people's surprise at this move is more to do with the prevailing attitude to circus in Britain than anything else.  photo by James Waddell |
On the continent, all sorts of people are involved in circus. Over here, its seen, 'as a vagabond way of life or dropping out'. Actually Nell says, their way of life is very civilised. They sit down together over dinner and talk.
'You have to make a huge effort all the time to be good to each other, otherwise the show falls apart'.
Nell's mother had a riding accident, and now lives in care, unable to speak. She's not sure that she 'ran away to the circus'. Her mum brought her up to be independent and quite physical and that has rubbed off.
As for Toti, he would never have dreamt five years ago that he would be part of a circus. He joined it for love.
 photo by James Waddell |
MORE INFORMATION
Giffords Circus
Circus Arts Forum
Giffords Circus, 29th August - 2nd September
If you've lived on the road in a community, tell us about it on the message board..
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