A Fictional Past Life Account

As a writing exercise, I imagined a past life I may have had. This was fun!

It was Ireland in 1950, back then I was a circus performer in a travelling circus.  I was a horse trainer and gymnast, and I would perform for people with my horses in formation, whilst doing backflips and tricks on the back of my best show horse.  His name was Ruhan and he was jet black and huge with a majestic tail and mane, all glossy from my daily attention to it.  I would wear a lot of white; leotards with feathers and sequins, we looked quite the pair with the colour contrast, presentation was everything.

We travelled a lot, and I didn't have much space.  As a stage performer I got my own room in a small caravan, which was pulled by horses when we travelled.  I didn't have much in the way of furniture, only a mirror to get ready in front of before shows, a small stool, and my bed which was cushions and rugs arranged in a corner of the room.  In the winter it used to get very cold as there were no soft furnishings only drapes to insulate the carriage.

I would wake up at 5 in the morning to tend to the horses, and the circus workers would help me muck out the stables.  Then I would start training, paying special attention to Ruhan who must be performing at the best standard as all eyes would be on him and me!  At 1 PM we would have a light lunch and prepare for the afternoon shows.  People would start to arrive at 2 PM and we would put on various exhibitions:  I would parade Ruhan around and children would pay a few pennies to ride the other horses around the paddock.

The shows start at 3 or 4 PM, and my act was doing gymnastics on Ruhan while he walked in formation with the other horses, doing jumps and generally looking magnificent!  Then after the shows; which was often 4 or 5 repeats of the same performance, we would all have a stiff drink in the big top and have a bit of a chat and wind down, but most of us had early starts so we were all off to bed fairly early.

One of the horse grooms had his eye on me and he would often visit my room late at night when he had finished his many duties.  He got paid so little for the amount of hard work he did, but that was just how times were I suppose.  His name was Kian and he had dark eyes and chestnut brown hair, he reminded me of a horse I used to have but I would never tell him that!

We were not allowed to stay in one place for more than 3 weeks, mostly we kept ourselves to ourselves, occasionally we would visit towns and villages in the beautiful Irish countryside, I was always so taken aback by the beautiful rolling hills and landscapes that seemed to just go on forever.  We tended to get very rowdy when we celebrated so occasionally we had dealings with the local authorities.  We would always have to make a swift departure when this happened!  We were all mostly Catholic by birth.  This was the popular religion in Ireland at the time, especially for the working class, which all of our families were.