Monsieur E Konig opened the evening shows with a truly inspired monologue - indeed, threat - that if the audience didn't take its part in the proceedings seriously enough then it would be scoffed by the malicious seating. Happily this disaster was averted; the audience I was in was small but sufficiently vocal to keep the beast at bay.

The acts varied from [cliche alert] the sublime to the [here it comes] the ridiculous. I'll not say which end of the spectrum I think each fell into but shall settle for listing the various acts to jog the memory ... you can relive those moments in the manner you think appropriate.

First up were Helen and Stu on wheels. One each. What poise; what control; what a dress…

Sanjay did something very rarely seen on a CCC stage - he spoke. Live. In person. While juggling. Entertainingly. For having the nous & nerve to do something different I'll just about forgive him for the horrible pun of the title of his piece 'Jugglewocky'. Just about.

Next - or maybe not, I can't really remember the order, but if I say 'next' authoritatively enough maybe everyone'll believe me - some scary hairy computer programmers waved their glowing bits about in the dark. Very prettily too, if I may say so, Mark & Bruce.

Brendan & Charlie kept the audience counting. I'm not sure whether their club passing piece required M Konig's intervention from a purely artistic point of view; it certainly added drama to a virtuoso display.

Ian & Claire's acrobalance was wry, original and beautiful - and one of the rare CCC pieces to have a real set; it certainly added to the atmosphere in just the right way.

Brendan re-emerged in his guise as diabolomeister; he was as fluid as ever if a little droppy. It's such a nice change not to see 18 year old speed freaks at the controls.

Stu and Helen clearly hadn't worked hard enough earlier in the show so reappeared to perform an elegant trapeze and doubles piece. 'afraid I can't remember much about it but blame that on the brown ale.

does, and being harassed, as is common in such situations. Chris, Rob & Simon entertained with a marvellously hatstand sharing thing which caused many a chuckle. It certainly left me with a happy glow - no doubt enhanced by that brown ale again.

A little known fact: at the dawn of time, the length of a year was decided based largely on the amount of time it takes to lessen the impact of a severely traumatic experience, for example, the Community Show. So, spurred on by the twin gods of over-enthusiasm and potential humiliation, I agreed to be in my second.

To simplify rehearsals, we broke into small teams and created our own acts, leading to a situation new to me: not knowing how you are doing compared to everyone else. Paranoia struck. In the run-up it was obvious that everybody else's act was more together, more interesting and fundamentally better than ours. And I guess everyone else felt the same.

We hit the first night way too soon, not having had a dress rehearsal and never having performed our act with sound effects, so they came as much as a surprise to us as the audience.

I can't really report the atmosphere backstage during the first half, as I was the muttering dark heap hiding off stage right (aka "stage manager"). However, the occasional whiff of a tense, wired atmosphere gusted through the green room door to me, though I guess even row Z could hear the strangled howls of laughter as the crew listened on the monitor one more time to Sanjay's astonishing vocal contortions. I've never seen a juggling act that would work so well on radio.

Preparing back stage for the second half there was still plenty of time to get starey-eyed & sweaty, jealously watching the other acts come off in the glow of success and sheer relief.

Despite strong showings from Deb (the usual spot-on direction) and our spirited comperes, my top vote of thanks goes to the smallish but perfectly formed audiences in the evenings. I particularly remember a roof-lifting roar after Brendan's piece on the Saturday night, letting us really believe in the show.

Of course, modesty dictates that the most credit should go to other cast members for over-coming their own terror and the overwhelming urge to lock themselves in the toilet (it can't only have been me) and giving us a show to be in. You were great.

(But we were fantastic.)

A multitude of spectacularly skilled performers wandered around York University campus. Thoroughly confused convention-goers spent many happy hours Gatto-spotting. The elusive individual was surprisingly hard to identify due to the number of staggeringly good jugglers who just might be Gatto. Many people managed to find a reassuring number of more familiar faces smiling back thanks to the wonderful turnout of folk from Dorset to Scotland. Or Dusseldorf to San Francisco, come to that.

Whether you occupied your time watching plastic things flying above your head, above your friend or above a new acquaintance, or whether you wandered the picturesque streets of York with a unicycling pantomime cow, there was always something to watch and amaze.

The shows were continuous. Spirits were high in the Renegade, perhaps too high for the comfort of most performers. Unfortunately nothing could prevent Dave from Rotterdam performing yet another ear-assaulting fire swinging routine. The highlight was Jay Gillian juggling scarves with style, humour and abandon.

Circomedia presented a showcase of exciting acts, notably Lena's diabolo and the two comperes. Graceful and stunning trapeze routines abounded in the No Fit State Circus tent, which was aerially active for much of the convention.

The Public Show was an event not be missed. With one thousand jugglers queuing in the rain the anticipation ... led to something quite daft. After a tentative start a Mexican wave was travelling back and forth along the queue, even spiralling up the staircase inside the building. A surprisingly successful Mexican 'Baa!' followed though the Mexican duck just didn't catch on, despite the enthusiastic attempts at the head of the queue.

Once inside we were awe-struck and entertained by incredible skill and well-rounded performances:

A slick, flashy and entertaining American club passing duo, Free Fall, started the show in style.

Ben Smalls gave us an idea of what it might be like to watch a ballet whilst thinking Gandini in a Stretch People frame of mind.

Twelve jugglers from the Millennium Dome gave a huge and impressive display of club, ring and ball passing. We were fortunate enough to see more from the Circus Space and Gandini people in other parts of the show.

Jamie's three ball act was a joy to watch, but I think I would prefer to see more of his own personality on stage.

Sam Faulkes dazzled with flatland bicycle tricks of unfathomable complexity on an unfeasibly slippery stage.

It is hard to imagine an act involving handstands and ping-pong balls, but it is very amusing to watch one.

A Spanish act made peculiarly effective use of bold colour, shape and hoops.

Nikki and Richard ran a slick acrobalance routine with improbable tricks.

Curious Eyebrows were, well, curious.

Errol's diabolo act was driven by music from a smooth, relaxed pace to a frenetic conclusion.

For myself, the highlight of the show was Feeding the Fish with the premier of their new act. Alix paced onstage, leading the others to take up positions. We waited a moment for the stage to be lit up, but instead the music started and, to our amazement, the clubs lit up. A dim red pulsing at first, but as an energetic clubswinging routine unfolded the clubs became brighter, highlighting each person in turn. It must have required serious skill to perform such a demanding club passing routine in low light.

Excellent choreography created arcing after-images of red and blue light which changed in unison to reflect the changing juggling patterns. Awesome.

The finale was, of course, Gatto. A shimmering display of technical skill but notable chiefly for how far inside his ability Gatto actually performs on stage. It was a family occasion for the Gattos, yet again they were able to bemuse the assembled jugglers.

A rather smug tally on the part of some CCC members produced the statistic that every single act that wasn't flown in from abroad, apart from Curious Eyebrows, has already appeared on the Cambridge Convention stage!

However, the show didn't end there, it moved on to the No Fit State tent for want of a trapeze. A duo from Dublin performed an act which built up to a furious pace in an impressive display of energy and talent.

Not to mention plenty of opportunity to be silly in the sunshine, or was that mud? I'm not sure how I managed to walk to the shower in the morning without slipping over, maybe because I was moving very slowly.

The facilities were great, particularly the hot showers which were ideal for warming up and waking up in the morning. Traders had converted part of the cafeteria into a brightly coloured plastic Aladdin's cave, the lure of which was truly justified by the quality bargains within.

And, ooh, those laser-cut sheet-steel passes. Flash or what?

Editorial is traditionally the bit of the paper where you get some opinionated views or lively debate. Well, I can try.

CCC gets a generous grant from the City Council because it fulfils their aims for community groups. This is a conscious effort on CCC’s part and takes work (many, many thanks to all who spare the time to perform and teach at CCC gigs). This money is important. Without it a lot less would get done. In fact, we would be just a hall for Sunday juggling – if that. No community show, no convention, no trapeze, no insurance, no workshop kit and the extras (costumes, stilts, unicyles, trapezes, etc).

This grant means CCC needs to think hard about what it does. Everybody needs to think, and say what they think, so the committee can reflect what members want.

So, is the community show outliving its usefulness or is it CCC’s main achievement? Is the juggling convention a useful community project or a bit of fun for the usual juggling crowd? Is the cabaret a good publicity exercise or a bit of self-indulgence for performers?

All those things could go both ways. What we do next will affect them.

The juggling convention has been called a ‘party for jugglers’ that has nothing to do with CCC’s grant application remit. The popularity of our absolute beginners workshops (which no other convention runs) contradicts this a bit but the convention still doesn’t attract ‘local’ (as in Cambridge city) people. I think we could do better.

In Germany, conventions frequently offer a much reduced daytime ticket to local people with the aim of recruiting new interest to juggling. We could do this. With publicity beforehand, this could tempt people who have never tried circus before: families, students, and so on. If these people like it so much they want to see the show as well, they can pay the same ticket price as everyone else as we haven’t usually sold out of tickets by then. Maybe they’ll even want to see another show of ours.

The community show has unquestionably brought a lot of people to performing. Last year’s show was one of the biggest ever, yet this year's show almost didn’t happen (and still produced a high-quality result). Six years ago the show was so popular with the audience it ran over two weekends. In recent years the audience has shrunk and shrunk.

How do we address this and attract more people, performers and audience alike, to the event? If the audience continues to shrink, is the show still worth running?

[maybe]: as most of CCC’s gigs are outdoor events, the Community Show should be an outdoor event or designed as one, with a premiere in the Drama Centre if we wish. Perhaps we could team up with Strawberry Fair and perform there (free, local entertainment for them, an audience for us). CCC needs to be able to take parts of shows to its summer gigs, and the people who did this year’s show seemed very keen on this aspect. Why not follow it further?

The cabaret is the biggest difficulty. It’s wonderful in that it gives people another chance to perform to an appreciative audience. But if I was being unkind, which I’m not of course [neat trick if I can get away with this], I could accuse it of being a two-tier system, with people who see themselves as too professional for a community show reserving themselves for the cabaret. That said, the two different shows offer scope to the number of talented people we have. It’s fine to have two different acts using the same skill in one show, provided they are different in style, but it’s less interesting when there are three or more (I know, I went to the Arts Café which featured seven local poets).

The audience is also the same friends of jugglers that we rely on for all our shows, and the cabaret is only two or three months before the community show. Does this mean that we exhaust goodwill for attending the community show? (I have visions of an exhausted audience strewn along the roadside in Covent Garden – soon to be joined by the performers).

The question is really which are our core activities and how much support is there for each of them. We want everything to be a success but that might mean pruning back on one to allow others to grow. If something has to give then I think the cabaret is more expendable because there is scope for other performances for those who are keen – the Arts Café, Strawberry Fair, LEAPS and so on.

As I said, these are opinions. You don’t have to agree. Better, in fact , if you have other ideas. What CCC does next should be discussed widely so as many options as possible are aired; and so the committee can reflect the general feeling of members when making the decision.

Or better still, join the committee and make the decisions yourself.

Any masochists who can balance on one wheel and cope with extreme saddle soreness while raising lots of lovely money for CCC and Breakthrough Breast Cancer should contact Rob. A volunteer to drive the support vehicle (an estate car) would also be great. The bike ride is on 23^rd July.

Is that it? You say. No big deal, you think. Well it is. Without the committee there are no workshops, no teachers, no community shows, no cabarets, no conventions, no gigs, no grant, no money AND NO JUGGLING.

You don’t have to organise everything all on your own. You don’t have to teach every workshop or attend every gig. There are other people willing to help with all these things. You don’t even have to attend every committee meeting. What we do need is your views, your voice, your enthusiasm and 1.5 hours of your time once a month (most months) for a meeting.

Please help.

Shall we run no. 5? Initial interest and offers of help are promising. The venues still need to be checked for availability but the proposed dates are either:

Saturday 30^th September, or

Saturday 7^th October.

There’s lots to be done so all volunteers are enthusiastically welcomed. There is a Convention Organiser’s meeting at 7pm on Wednesday May 31^st, in the garden of the Cambridge Blue.

The outcome of the Extraordinary General Meeting on Sunday 7^th May was that CCC members agreed to dissolve Cambridge Community Circus Limited Company and instead have the status of a Community Group while actively seeking charitable status. The company has to be dissolved in order to become a charity because its company aims and articles are not compatible with charitable status.

We now have the accounts for the Community Show and, sadly, this year we made a loss of almost £300.

The Juggling World Record Attempt on July 1^st needs your help. Please encourage as many people as possible to come along.

We now have an email discussion group up and running - to join send an email to the following address:

camcircus-subscribe@egroups.com

This list is for general discussion of circus-related things in Cambridge. Please don't send huge attachments as this will get expensive for some people. Any questions email charlie@juggler.net.

Do you think that’s its about time you aired your views in this newsletter instead of listening to me blathering on? Seen an amazing show? Been to a wonderful juggling convention? Bought some fabulous clubs?

Whatever you want, just e-mail text to me at chloe@juggler.net or hand it over one juggling session.