Translation

In the mid-1950s, I was teaching a class of six year olds at Quarry Mount Primary School in Woodhouse, Leeds. If you stand on Woodhouse Lane facing the city centre and look across to your left over Woodhouse Moor, it is easy to spot the large, brick built Victorian building with the distinctive clock tower, a familiar landmark.

One summer there was a great excitement because the famous Bertram Mills Circus arrived on nearby Woodhouse Moor for a three week stay. The children were begging their parents to take them to the circus and at break times, by peering through the iron railings of the playground, they were able to watch as trucks loaded with equipment rolled along Woodhouse Street towards the moor.

The headteacher, Miss Lang, introduced a new child to my class. Alexis, the lion tamer’s daughter was to join us for just three weeks. A pleasant, polite, and quiet child, Alexis had wavy, tawny hair rather like the mane of one of her father’s lions. She was nicely dressed – there was no school uniform for infants in those days – and obviously well cared for. We made her welcome. The other children were friendly and several of the girls promised to look after her at playtime.

Alexis was used to attending a different school every few weeks, just wherever the circus happened to be performing. It soon became obvious that this itinerant life was not helping her education. I was not surprised to find that she was struggling to read and write, and she was finding even simple arithmetic difficult.

On the third day, we had a P.E. lesson. I took the class into the hall and reminded them to do their warmup exercises. All at once I realised that the children were standing still and gazing in astonishment at our new pupil. Alexis was whizzing round the room performing a series of cartwheels. She followed that with backflips and then showed us that she could walk on her hands.

When the lesson was over and everyone was dressed again, I sat with the children on the carpet and encouraged Alexis to talk about her life. She said that she had been learning to do acrobatics for most of her life and that she had her own pony and was learning to be a bareback rider like her mother. Her grandfather was Coco, the world-famous clown. She also told us that when she was eight she was to go to boarding school like her older cousins.

When the circus left town we were all sorry to say goodbye to Alexis and I often wondered how she fared at boarding school and in later life. It seemed that her career was already decided for her.