When I was very small, and that was a long, long time ago, my Dad told me that I was old enough to go to the circus and that on my very next birthday he would take me to see one. Well, I was excited, but I wasn't really sure what to expect, and even the word was a new one to me, so I ran all the way down to the local library, pulled out a book and read all the about the circus.

Wow, what a wonderful birthday this was going to be. According to the book everything happened in a huge white tent, so tall you could hardly see the top, and right in the middle of everyone was the ringmaster, with his long coat and tall hat, and he shouted out what was going to happen, and everyone would listen as he told about all the wonderful things to come. I read all about the amazing animals - the lions and the tigers and the elephants, which would run and walk and do whatever they were told.

Then there were the fire eaters - however much fire they ate, there was still more. The book said that some circuses had side shows, with the muscle-bound strong man, the towering giant, the fortune teller and the hall of mirrors. The jugglers and the trapeze artist and the high wire, they were there too, performing in the big tent, doing things you wouldn't believe were possible. And the crowd would be excited, and on their feet cheering, and how wonderful it all sounded. But best of all were the clowns - I knew right away the clowns would be my favourite, even before I saw them. They made me laugh just to look at them. This was the circus and I couldn't wait.

The great day came. My birthday. Without even being told, I put on my best clothes, because today was the day I was going to the circus. Dad gave me some money and told me to keep it safe, and I knew that was how I would pay for my ticket, so I kept a tight hold of it all the way there. I thought we would have to take the bus, but would you believe it, the circus was right around the corner of the street, and I hadn't even realised!

There were lots of people going in, and they didn't seem as excited as I was, but maybe that's because it was my first time. Dad smiled and said I could sit wherever I wanted, and I went right up to the second row, and would've gone all the way to the front, but I didn't really want to get too close to the tigers, not on my first visit anyway.

Well we sat in our seats and it all went really quiet, and then I saw him. The ringmaster! Wow! He looked even more amazing than in the book. His hat was huge and his long coat reached right to the ground. This was going to be great. Suddenly things started to happen. The ringmaster stood in front of the crowd and announced the first performance.

Now I know this is going to sound really ungrateful, and it was my birthday and Dad was doing a special thing for me and all that, but... well, somehow it just wasn't quite the spectacle my excited young mind had conjured up for me. Maybe the ringmaster just wasn't a very good one, because to be honest he was very, very boring. Sure enough he told us about the animals from all around the world, but he really seemed to be taking a long time about it. Okay, so he threw in something I wasn't expecting - something about a boat they would all fit into - but I couldn't really see how they would ever get a boat inside the place, and now I think about it I couldn't see any animal cages either. I looked around impatiently, expecting the elephants to come out at any time, but the ringmaster kept on talking and, well, he was in charge, so there wasn't really much I could do to speed things along.

The library book had said that the ringmaster would anounce the performers one at a time, but this one was different - he seemed to be telling us about all of them before we'd even seen the first one. He told us that the fire eaters were next, and I don't think they were a big favourite of his because he seemed quite angry about them. He even said that some of the audience might be fire eaters, and that seemed like something I could do one day, but oddly enough I got the impression he was warning us against that, rather than encouraging us to take it up as a profession.

I pulled on my Dad's arm and asked where the clowns were, but Dad whispered that I had to be quiet because churches were places where you didn't talk very much. I thought he'd got it wrong when he said 'churches', but no, that really was what he meant. So that was another new word I learned, and come to think of it churches and circus do sound a little alike, so maybe that's why I was confused. All of a sudden I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as I again remembered the clowns. The ringmaster hadn't mentioned them yet, but surely he would announce them soon. There had to be clowns, there just had to be. But somehow I knew that even this was going to be denied me.

No longer listening to the dull ringmaster, I looked at my surroundings for the first time and wondered why I hadn't even realised that this was no tent at all, it was just a big white building made of stone. It wasn't even round - how would the horses run in circles when all there was was quite a small, square space, with some kind of table filled with candles at the far end? The book I'd read never said the audience would stand up and sing, but we did. Twice. And inbetween all that, the ringmaster announced that big things would happen, huge things that we should all look forward to seeing. Now he was starting to sound like the fortune teller, and that wasn't his job at all. I just wanted to see something, if he'd only stop talking about it and let the performers come out and perform.

And remember those coins Dad gave me? Coins I should have used to buy a ticket? Well, I still had them, and I held onto them until much, much later, when a big brass dinner plate was passed around. Everyone else put their money on it, so I did too. But I never got a ticket, and I didn't really see why we should pay at all, because we never saw the tigers, or the elephants, and, most disappointing of all, there weren't even any clowns. This was the worst circus I could ever have imagined, just a ringmaster with no ring, telling us to expect lots of different things, some of which might be great to see, if only we could see them, but we never did. None of the things he told us about ever actually happened.

I don't know why, but after that Dad took me to the circus every week, until one day when I was much older I told him I was never going again. By then we'd moved house a few times and been to quite a few different circuses, but they were all as disappointing as the first. As the years went by the ringmasters became louder and louder, and stranger and stranger. They no longer wore tall hats and long coats, but some of them waved their fists at the audience, and most of them still warned about the dangers of becoming fire eaters.

But those places really do have all the things the circus book said I would find. The ringmaster still tells tall tales about the animals and the boat, the strong man and the giants, and every week he thinks of a new way tell your fortune, as if he knows what's really going to happen. The hall of mirrors is real enough. Wherever you stand things seem different, distorted, until you can't believe what's real anymore. The ringmaster performs everything with words, not actions - he juggles, he balances on the high wire, and does breathtaking acrobatics, all of them with a safety net, which he calls 'The Bible'.

But always, always I missed the clowns. To me that's what the circus was all about, and the day I stopped going was the day I figured out why there were no clowns at any circus I'd ever visited. The clowns were there alright, they'd been there all along. The ringmasters, the men who stand and call out to the crowd, those are the biggest clowns of them all. And although they talk about some truly comical things, you only really learn to laugh at them when you walk out of the circus, the churches, for the very last time.