"(We Waited For) The Circus" lyrics - ANDY BELL

We waited for the circus
To come to town
A month or so after the last fight at the fairground
We fell in love with acrobats
And everything else that
The circus had then come to mean
To the bored and glamour starved teen queens
Of a small town, full of small minds in the Thatcherite '80s

There were tigers, jugglers, clowns
And tightrope and trapeze
Watched in silence, with no sound
A stunned audience enraptured
Encaptured in a moment of suspended disbelief
At the sleight of hand and trickery
Generations of illusionists bequeathed

The fire-eating ringmaster
Dancing horses and dwarf twins
Who mirrored everything
In a balancing act on stacks of chairs
The audience gasped
You simply had to be there

And the kiddies gasped at equilibrists
Who'd hoist their weight up on just one wrist
And the dwarfs who decked into a daze
The strongman with a wimpish kick that missed
Childhood dreams are made of this

You could almost smell the greasepaint
As their convoy came to town
And we'd dream about a night out
When I wouldn't get knocked about
By an alcoholic father
Who shagged all sorts on the side
I was witness from the inside of a marriage on the slide

And soon without goodbye
I left my childhood home of lies
After watching that much loved circus
For the very final time