Boarding was complete on my sold-out flight, yet nothing happened. Until a message came that there was a technical error report in the cockpit and the plane would have to be evacuated. I went into the lounge and about an hour later the First Officer came in and told us the plane would not be leaving Las Vegas that night.

Downstairs at the baggage carousel, there was chaos. Suitcases and backpacks were piling up. My mind flashed back to the time when I was trying to leave Morocco to get back to Paris whilst the Icelandic volcano had grounded most planes.

The mountain of bags kept growing with the inevitability of tectonic drift. Two sassy airport personnel ladies were not impressed.

“I’m not risking injury for $20 an hour,” said one of them. I began hauling bags off the overfull carousel. Not entirely altruistically, I must admit. My bag was still somewhere in the belly of the airport. Finally, the carousel vomited it out and I hurried home.

I’d said goodbye to my wife and daughter just five hours before. My wife and I managed to rebook the second leg of the journey from London to Billund in Denmark before I jumped into bed with my wife.

Next morning at 7 my daughter came into our bedroom and she could not have been more excited had she found Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny in our bed. We decided to keep her home from school and went out to eat at Public Us, a lovely downtown cafe.

A few hours later I was back at the airport. The flight was now due to leave at 4. Making the delay 15 hours. I was now missing rehearsals in Denmark. As I’m looking at the departure screens the flight disappears. There are no airline offices at the Las Vegas airport, so there was not a single person that had any information. Any call to British Airways went directly to India, so there was no help there. Finally, a message came up on the airline’s app telling me that the flight had been further delayed until 11 o clock, the next day making the flight more than 50 hours late.

India told me I couldn’t change my flight or get any refund since I had already checked in. Which was true, but that was two days ago, I was supposed to have been across the Atlantic by now.

By this stage, I thought I’d be going to have a heart attack. My wife found another flight leaving the next day. We book it online. It was less than 24 hours until departure thus the ticket was not a bargain. Paid on my card, then received no confirmation. For some reason, it took four phone calls, to my bank, the airline and the Expedia booking agency before the ticket purchase went through.

Next day the only sticky point was a less than one-hour changeover in San Fransisco. I got to the airport and the first flight was delayed.

Yet despite it all, I made the second leg of the journey and arrived Denmark and drove onto the Zirkus lot at 3 o’clock. Half an hour later the rehearsal began.

At the end of rehearsals, I cycled to a supermarket and bought the strictest necessities, coffee, Baileys, bread, and mayonnaise. Back in the wagon, I ate then passed out. Next morning came way too early. I got up made coffee, poured in some Baileys and put my winter jacket on. It was 1 degree Celsius and five in the morning. The cup steamed and so did my breath and as the sun came up over the black and red big top with its long rows of carnival lights dangling gayly in the sea breeze a duck and a seagull came walking on to the Zirkus lot looking miffed that we had set up our tents, caravans and living wagons right where the two avian dinosaurs liked to enjoy their morning walk.

There is a particular kind of loneliness you get when you wake up jet-lagged on a different continent to those you love. Only one thing in the world can make me voluntarily go through these separations, my other love, the circus.

I have never had another job than doing shows. Those of us who ply our trade in circus and novelty acts know that to remain novel we must travel. This is part of the business. In the beginning, this is often a great plus, we get to travel AND perform. That’s a win-win in most young performer’s book. As I’ve become a father and husband the travel has increasingly become an obstacle. As my daughter has become of school age it has become more and more important, not just that she begins learning for that has been happening just fine, but I think it is of acute importance that she also gets to be with a group of kids her own age for an extended period of time.

The friends you make on a three week run of shows in New Zealand or a five-week stint in South Africa are fine and fun, they are akin to what Tyler Durden in Fight Club calls “single serve friends.” Like the cups, cutlery and napkins on an aeroplane, your travel companion sitting in the seats next to you, impinging on your privacy and space are single serve friends. Of course, our fellow Showfolk are more than single serve, our world is small. We see each other again and again. With random intervals decided by everyone’s show plans, calendars, and what gigs we get.

When you are a child you are constantly learning. Not like we adults are learning when we visit a museum or follow a university course online during off time backstage. Kids are learning important lessons for how life works. They need to learn to make friends. Not just single serve friends, but long on-going relationships that go beyond the first few days of fun. They need to learn to work through differences. They need to learn how social structures in groups of people work. Personally, I got this before I, myself, chose to follow the Way of the Showman. I want to give my girl the same opportunity. A great school, good friends and fun things to do on the weekends.

I have found the loophole in Las Vegas. I’m going to take all of my savings and following an absolute foolproof system, I will risk it all on the Roulette tables setting myself up for life…

Not really…

I’m going to live a “normal” life. Waking up in the morning and making some cereal for my daughter before driving her to school. Then laze about by my pool with my wife before picking my daughter up at school. Maybe invite some friends over for dinner and finally jump in my car and drive 20 min to work. My work being in a show on the famous Las Vegas Boulevard, or the Strip as its called. So not completely normal, but as close as you can get when you squeeze through tennis rackets for a living. Half an hour after the show, I’ll be at home.

This kind of routine is so normal most people don’t even see how special it can be. To not have to jump on a plane to fly to another continent for a gig, bringing on the very peculiar type of loneliness, a feeling of life being placed on pause. Waking up in the morning in Spain knowing I don’t have to go to work until 23:30 and that I will have to fill the whole day with something, when all I want is to be there when my daughter sees a wild seal for the first time or when she discovers yet another loose tooth in her mouth.

As all other show folks we tour to find new crowds. Las Vegas is a carnival large and famous enough to attract Crowds to it from all over the Globe. The Crowds change and the shows can stay the same.

I’m re-visiting this theme now about a year since I was going through these thoughts last, I am working on the last of the pre-existing gigs I wrote into the Vegas Contract, a last burst of life on the road and a massive outburst of creative freedom. I’m getting to do acts I don’t normally do, like my crazy sword swallowing & cucumber act, as well as acts I only do when I work with Søren Østergaard in Zirkus Nemo.

Soren Østergaard