The Flaming Fernando.

 

When my father was 16 he ran away and joined the circus.

Yep - wanted to lead with that line to get this over and done with: - it isn't just a cliche, or a tired plot line. Some people really have, in real life, and from time to time, done it - and my father, George Simcox was one of them.

Even people who are aware that this can be a fact rather than a fiction, looking at George would doubt it.

  He was so much the stereotypical RAF Officer the idea was ludicrous. His hands were always impeccably manicured, his blue-black hair Brylcreamed into submission but for a stray, somewhat romantic, recalcitrant lock. Like Hugh Grant's.

 In his youth he looked a bit like David Niven in all those WW2 movies (" a mean little moustache" my mother always said about that incarnation.) In his middle years, when he and Jimmy Edwards were fighting The Battle of The 'Tache, (which developed into The HandleBar Club still going strong here in Brighton I discovered to my joy. ) he looked jolly and bluff. In his old age he was often joyfully held to be Father Xmas.

But no mater what period of his life it was, he was never regarded as anything other than an English gentleman; and favoured cravats, and blazers, and looked rather smashing in formal dress. A plain, gold signet ring on his little finger; a watch with plain leather strap on his wrist:- some would even doubt he had ever attended a smelly, dusty circus, let alone performed in one. 

His mother having died when he was 4, and all his much older siblings having left home, (two of them had even left the country.), provision had been made upon the death of his father, for George to remain in the house under the stewardship of the Housekeeper. (And  a rather gruff but kindly woman always referred to only as "my friend". So that all these years later I still don't know her name.)

No contest really, for a young kid in the early 30's. Live with two elderly women? Hhhmmm. Run away and join the circus? 

What 16 year old is even going to have to give it two minutes consideration?

He received his performance name before anyone had bothered to find out if he could perform. One of the troupe of acrobats had no sooner dropped out (?)...and in the door walked...The Flying Fernando. I expect it only took one or two rehearsals before it dawned on everyone that Fernando would never fly.

It turned out that Fernando, however, could Flame like a good 'un - and was able to hold a breath for an unusually long time. Which meant he could whoosh fire rather a long way; for rather a long time. 

That celebrated conqueror of Fire - The Flaming Fernando - was born.

Unfortunately he died soon afterwards when the brother remaining  in England found him and hauled him back to Home and School and two women who came to love him unconditionally. (Both of whom  George loved, but one of whom he adored and who I, apparently, called 'Grandma Florrie' on first meeting.)

As a result of this I had grown up unquestioningly  knowing that my daddy was in the RAF and my daddy was a fire-eater.

(If asked about it I would probably have thought his war experiences had involved being flown around in a plane breathing fire on the enemy below.)

 By the age of 6 I was  able to critique his performance. At the age of 16 I joined in as The Glamourous Assistant.

Once.

*So, now we are all sitting comfortably, I shall unfold The Tale of  Flamin' Fernando and his flamin' Glamourous Assistant.

*I am doing this in a rather Dickensian effort to heighten the suspense, of course. But mainly because introducing The Flaming Fernando took longer than I had planned ; and with no pics to break the prose I'm told, is to commit blogging suicide.