JUGGLERS do like to keep things airborne - hats, balloons, but especially paper darts - the air was full of flying, nose-diving objects as an amiable crowd of fully paid-up enthusiasts, and some curious outsiders like myself, waited for Lob'ster Circus, the Ninth Annual British Juggling Convention, to get under way.
But before that happened, a fire alarm transferred the merriment out of doors to the car park - where I managed to intercept a programme of events as it whizzed, dart-like, past my ear. The order of the days, apparently, had been workshops in such arcane practises as Advance Club Flourishing, Balls - How And What To Do With Fire and Balls and Mathematics. Gently my head began to spin - and the show hadn't even started.
But when it did, well it proved rather special. For one thing, there was a flesh-and-blood litmus test all around me, registering the difficulty and the artistry of the acts on stage.
Leading by an ecstatic gasp, and some envious sighs - the guys from Maine known as Blink. Americans, it seems, enjoy putting a scientific twist on juggling - one of their number has a doctoral thesis on parabolas to his name.
But none of this is allowed to get in the way of presenting quality, professional entertainment that engages amateurs, experts and ignorant onlookers alike.
Their forte is a kind of laid-back, dead-pan approach that has them moving unostentatiously from one amazing feat of dexterity to another. They have poise, dry humour and the ability to dazzle the eyes with marvellous patterns of weaving arms and flying balls.
Other acts, such as Haggis and Charlie and the gloriously eccentric Stretch People showed just how entertainingly good juggling can combine with zany comedy.
New technology is also coming into play - but as Simon Stapleton and his UV Parasols proved, when your props are fluorescent any slight mishap or drop becomes a massively glaring boo-boo, particularly when performing before an audience of your peers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article