LITMIR.BIZ

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an extended family of fairground folk. Now, in 1962, I was seventeen, homeless and needed a job badly, so I rang the number in the advert and arranged an interview.

      Speedy Barham was a short, stocky guy with a cheeky grin. He’d been a pilot in the air force but now he owned an aerial circus act that he called the Australian Air Aces. He came forward to greet me in the tent when I arrived, holding out his hand.

      ‘So, you must be Judy.’

      ‘That’s me.’

      I liked him immediately – he seemed really comfortable with himself, which set me at my ease. I also loved the smell of the place – the bales of hay and animal cages and the lingering sweetness of popcorn and candy floss.

      ‘It’s not like a regular job interview, you know,’ he grinned. ‘Is it OK if you hang around till Thursday?’

      ‘Sure,’ I said. I had nowhere else to be.

      Speedy put me through my paces for a couple of days. I was skinny, but strong and very determined. I dived right in and hauled equipment, helped to set it up and spent hours swinging upside down on the trapeze as Speedy called out instructions. I made mistakes a couple of times and was terrified he would be cross with me. At home if I got something wrong my father had thought nothing of hurling me across the room, but Speedy just said ‘Whoa! I think you’d better try that one again.’

      ‘Don’t you feel nervous?’ he asked after one session. ‘That trapeze is pretty high.’

      ‘It’s OK,’ I said, but I couldn’t really explain to him why I had such steely nerves. The truth was that where I had grown up, getting badly hurt was a certainty. My father beat me almost daily on any pretext. I was used to being covered in bruises. Standing on a swing just didn’t hold the same threat, even if I was high up and without a safety harness. I shrugged. Sometimes being on the trapeze took my breath away, but it was no comparison to the kind of terror I had lived with when my father flew off the handle, hurled abuse in my direction and beat me black and blue.

      When Speedy offered me the job I was so delighted that my face flushed with happiness. I could feel my cheeks glowing. It was like being accepted into a big happy family – like a dream come true for me. Speedy said I could stay on the fairground site in a 1930s brown coach with a yellow stripe painted all round it, so that solved my accommodation problem. We agreed a wage of eight pounds a week, which was a fortune for a seventeen-year-old in 1962. As Bobby, one of the other aerial artistes, put it ‘It’s not half as bad as working in Walls’ sausage factory.’

      The act I was to perform in was an amazing type of aerial acrobatics. Speedy rode a motorbike round a track that was suspended forty feet up in the air. The bike was connected to a narrow platform that see-sawed up and down, causing the bike to somersault through the air with Speedy clinging onto it. Meanwhile, two other girls – Speedy’s girlfriend Vicky and Bobby, a glamorous blonde – and I would do a trapeze act above him. At the climax of the act, I had to leave the trapeze and walk slowly along the central platform until my weight caused Speedy’s wheels to descend once more onto the track. The show was to be performed outdoors so we’d have to watch out for gusts of wind, or rain making the platform slippery, and everything happened at high speed, without a safety net. There was no margin of error. One lapse of concentration could cost everyone their lives. So when I started we rehearsed the act over and over – it felt like a thousand times.

      Speedy was very patient, teaching me how to count between the moves and be very aware of where everyone else was. We rehearsed on the ground first and I got the hang of it quickly. Then we had to get the timing right for Speedy’s somersaults.

      ‘I’ll call out to you when I’m ready,’ he said.

      We tried that a couple of times without much success. I’m deaf in my right ear because my eardrum was burst by Dad’s girlfriend Freda in one of her vicious attacks when I was just four years old. I couldn’t make out Speedy’s instructions over the roar of the motorbike.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, nervously. No matter how kind everybody seemed I had been brutally tutored to expect a violent reaction if I didn’t please. Now I had to come clean about my disability. Fortunately, Speedy was very understanding.

      ‘Don’t worry about it, love,’ he said. ‘There has to be a way round that.’ After a bit of thought, he fixed a light to the back of his bike and when he wanted me to move, he switched the light on. It was a signal I could easily follow.

      I was incredibly grateful – I couldn’t quite believe that everyone was being so nice to me, something I just wasn’t used to at all.

      Gradually we started rehearsing the more dangerous tricks high up on the equipment and before I knew it Speedy announced that we were ready to face the public.

      Belle Vue’s Firework Island was an enormous entertainment complex, and huge audiences were normal at the shows. The first night I listened to the crowd arriving and peeked out from the bus where we were getting ready. Everyone was laughing and joking, staring towards the island with anticipation. The atmosphere was fantastic. Now I realized I had to prove that I could hold my nerve in front of an audience. I pulled on a leotard I’d been given, slapped on a bit of stage makeup and tied my dark hair back in a ponytail.

      As we came out the crowd were cheering like crazy. I got a tingly feeling of excitement as I looked up at the rig. Speedy went first to get himself ready on the bike, then Bobby and Vicky climbed to their stations while I got into place. The faces of the audience turned towards us as we moved higher and higher and I could feel the tension mounting as the crowd grew quiet. It was obvious how dangerous the act was – just being so high up without a safety net was risky.

      Vicky gave the thumbs up once we were all in place then Speedy got on the bike and began to ride. From that moment on, I shut out the audience and just counted carefully. Because we had rehearsed as much as we had, it meant that I hardly had to think. I span on the trapeze for ten counts and then I had six seconds until my next move. At just the right moment, I let go and dropped upside down, catching the bar with my feet and spreading my arms like an eagle over Speedy’s head as he zoomed past. A surge of excitement coursed through my whole body – an adrenaline rush that comes with flinging yourself into a dive, and having time stand still until you know you’re safe. Then as I surfaced into real time again, I caught the reaction of the audience. Everyone was clapping and cheering and I felt exhilarated from the rush of the dive and then the thrill of having everyone applauding me. A smile crept across my face and I couldn’t have wiped it off if I’d tried. As I moved carefully along the platform to lower Speedy, who was still somersaulting with the bike, I knew that all the hard work was more than worthwhile. The crowd went wild again and my face glowed with satisfaction.

      ‘This is it!’ I thought. ‘I can’t believe that I get to do this every day!’

      After that first performance I felt so proud of myself. I was the youngest on the team by miles and I had done it. The show left me on a high. In fact, I was dying to get out there and do it all again. The others were more experienced and consequently calmer so I tried not to show just how excited I was.

      ‘That was fine,’ Speedy said thoughtfully. ‘I think we can go on tour now. I’ll see if I can get some dates organized.’

      I hadn’t realized that we’d get to go away as well. ‘Where will we tour to?’ I asked keenly.

      ‘I’ll see what I can line up. Just round the country a bit. Anything within a day’s drive.’

      I told them that I had no ties at all, nothing keeping me in the Manchester area. I could travel anywhere they wanted me to, round the world if need be.

      Every few weeks Speedy got a booking and the four of us would set off in the bus, with our gear packed into the boot or tied onto the roof. Travelling around was hard work because of all the setting up that had to be done – I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so exhausted. On top of hauling the equipment we performed in two shows a day. But it was fun and I loved it. I wouldn’t have swapped my job for anything.

      It

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