The things you find on a Thursday night

After an early and marvellous evening at the Temple Bar (somebody, quick: how many references do I make, on this whole whopping blog, to the Temple Bar? Answer: roughly a bazillion), Morgan and I set off into the sunset, on a mission for entertainment. This brought us to the Wild Buffalo, where one of Morgan's co-workers was apparently performing with his band.

What sort of music do they play? I asked.

She didn't know.

What was really happening, we learned--after paying our cover, getting our hands attractively stamped with a black-light reactive "B", and finding ourselves inside the Wild Buffalo as we'd never seen it decorated before--was a circus. An honest-to-goodness circus. To which her friend's band was providing the soundtrack.

There were balloons and streamers everywhere, and servers in odd costumes--face-paint, corsets, black boots and ruffles. Clowns, wigged jugglers, people in stilts and gold lame and/or cheetah print pants--to say the least, we were outnumbered, because it was not just a circus, but a costume ball as well.

But it was wonderful. The opening band was a bit rough, and far too loud, and an act involving a clown-themed striptease was a bit disturbing, but the band, Captain Seahorse, was excellent, and every act (except for the creepy, stripping clown) was funny, engaging and a bit amazing. What fun, to stumble upon a small, independent circus, particularly when it was so good and so brilliant.