Champlain Valley Exposition

I have been a resident of Vermont since 5th July 2010. I remember it took us 3 days to drive up from Key West in a large yellow Penske truck and our Ford Explorer. Poppy was nine years old, and she drove a lot of the way with me in the big truck. Noah (who was five at the time) spent the journey with his Mum (Joanna) in the car. On arrival, I started street performing in Burlington, Vermont. Back then it was a vibrant city and Church Street Mall was alive with people relaxing, dining and shopping. It seemed that every weekend in the summer was a festival on Church Street, and I spent four very happy summers there. I mention this because after my second show at the Exposition, a young man came up to me and told me how he had grown up watching my shows on Church Street and how much he had enjoyed them as a child. He had just come back to Burlington, having been away at college, and he was very pleased to see me. I am sorry to say I have forgotten his name (bad me). Burlington has sadly taken a big dive, there is a homeless crisis and unfortunately Church Street is no longer what it was. I am hoping that things will get better there again.

I have been a street performer since 1987, and I have been around numerous homeless people in those years. Virtually every homeless person I have met has a mental health issue. If we want to solve the issue of the homeless, perhaps we should address the issue of mental health. Mental health is continually ignored both in the USA and the UK, yet it is a massive issue. I myself was hospitalized as a 21-year-old, I'm still not entirely sure what happened to me, but I couldn't control myself, and I was delusional and for a time had psychotic episodes. My second wife Joanna suffered very badly from Bi-polar disorder, in the end it destroyed our marriage, I'm glad to say she is in a much better place now. I also have at least four female relatives who had / have eating disorders. We see mental health conditions everywhere, and we still ignore and stigmatize them. Successive governments have continually underfunded mental health provision, we cannot fix either the homeless or the opioid epidemics until we fix mental health, both it's funding and our attitude towards it. I will get off my soap box now and get back to the fair.

This is my third year here at the Champlain Valley Exposition, it's also one of my three Vermont fairs of this year, the others being Lamoille County Field Days and the Tunbridge Worlds Fair. I love all of these Vermont fairs, and all three are very different. Champlain Valley is by far the biggest and has the most entertainment. I have two half hour shows and a short parade, the picture of me on the unicycle was taken during one of those parades. I really enjoy the parade and I follow the Dixieland Strollers who are Glendon Ingalls, Mike Hashem and John Stewart who play trad jazz and are pulled along in a cart by a tractor, they are great fun and everyday they run a sweep-stake betting on whether I will fall off my unicycle during the parade (Cheeky monkeys)!

That's Glendon with me and the unicycle.

This being my third year and the fact that I worked those years on Church Street means that I have a small following of people and people come looking for my show. It really is very nice. I'm not entirely sure why, but for some reason Vermont audiences get me and seem to really enjoy my humour.

The office staff are a great bunch of people, Gary and Tim are always appreciative and really just let me get on with it and it works.

I only do a five-day run here, and it seemed to fly by. The crowds got bigger as each day passed, except for the day it rained, when we all stayed inside and pouted! I took the picture of the midway above on the last day of the fair, and you can really see how busy it was. One of the other acts was Robert Clarke (Lucky Bob) who I know from my days at Faneuil Hall Marketplace he also does comedy juggling and magic but in a very different style to my own, he is very measured in his performance and like most performers who come from a street background he has great stage presence. I enjoyed watching a couple of his shows. I bought him dinner the day after I won the $10,000 from Penn Jillette and the Travel channel in 2013, it seemed like the least I could have done, considering.

Al Getler who is a local ventriloquist shows up unexpectedly on Sunday too, he enthusiastically greets me after my last show and wants to recommend me to another fair. If you are ever wondering how people like myself get work, it is mostly through these personal recommendations, and I have recommended both Lucky Bob and Al and others to several fairs and events over the years. So if you are a young performer starting out on this journey, remember to be nice!

Champlain Valley was over too quickly! Interestingly, the fair is closed on Labor Day. Don't worry though, I won't be idle, I have two shows to perform at the iconic Rocking Horse Ranch, Highland, New York.

I have been appearing at the Rocking Horse Ranch for a little more than 6 years now. It always surprises me just how many people of my age have special memories of the place. It's situated not too far from New York City, which I guess is why it is so famous, and I can certainly see the appeal for young families. The show room is a decent size and probably holds 250 people comfortably, the stage is quite small and the ceiling above the actual stage is relatively low for juggling, so I do a lot of the show on the dance floor in front of the stage. This two level approach can really add to some of the dramatic moments in the show. For example, when I do the knife chop through my arm I can be right in the audience faces on the floor and when I am wanting to be more subtle (rare for me) I can get more focus by being up on the stage.

Tonight's first crowd are really up for a good time, and the cheering for the bells is huge. The show was a walk in the park and everyone is happy. The second show wasn't quite as busy but all in all decent enough and although it was a little quieter than the first it was still a good time for all. I pack up and head for home, a mere two-hour drive. I have 4 days off and at home before my next gig, that will be the most time off I have had since before Glastonbury, and that seems like a very long time ago!