The Show Goes on, Forever
By Cheryl M.
The children are dancing in a field. They bop along to merry percussion and sing with the voices of cherubs. They are flowers, bright pink and blue tulips. They bloom and unfurl across the grass as squirrels scurry in between them. In the middle of this scene is a man who dances perfectly in step with the children. He is not just the star; he is their sun. He is quite literally a sun, dressed in gold with sunbeams radiating from his head. His voice rises high above the children’s, smooth and sweet like honey. The children dance with their sun all the way into the night.
Time for bed, children! Say goodnight to Dippity Dan.
The dancing children sigh and wind back down, their petals slowing to a small flutter. The sky dims and melts into the dark, but Dippity Dan’s smile stays bright and gleaming. He continues to shine above the sleeping children, a sun that can never fade out.
“Cut!”
The harsh lights shock the studio back to reality. They cast a glare on the stiff, fluorescent polyester that the kids have been fidgeting around in. They morph from dainty spring flowers into little child demons, scattering in all directions across the set. The rainbow-coloured backdrop and props quiver, left out in the open and at the mercy of these children. The floor manager comes running in. He scoops children off props and deposits them back in the holding area where their mothers are being caged.
Standing in the middle of this chaos is Dippity Dan, the most beloved man on children’s television. Dippity Dan rips the yellow sun headdress off and yanks at the zipper on his matching yellow bodysuit. The smile gets sucked back into the void of his blank face. Now he’s just Dan. No longer the sun but just a spandex-covered human with a hangover. The Jim Beams last night had been a bad idea, but he doesn’t know how else he could have survived a whole week of filming Dippity Dan’s New Year Special and pretending to have fun with twenty spoiled kids in costumes. His bloodshot eyes feel like they’ve just been lasered off by all the studio lights. They’re going to have to fix the redness in post-production later.
He’s about to make his way off the set when a little one breaks free from the cluster and clamps himself around Dan’s legs. It takes huge effort not to shake the boy right off his leg. The last time that happened there was a great uproar with the parents and the producers. Dan does not need that kind of drama in his life right now. But he does need to get this child off, so he stamps his foot on the floor until it comes loose. Head throbbing, he makes his escape out of the artificial field and accidentally steps on a squirrel.
“Hey! Dippity Dan!” The floor manager yells. He’s always yelling. “Don’t break the animatronics!”
It takes almost an hour to remove the children and their parents from set. Dan is back in the dressing room, scrubbing off every inch of Dippity Dan’s shiny face. There are smudges on his foundation where his smile indented itself into his face. He wipes them off with cotton pads and tosses them into the dustbin. They land among a pile of empty beer cans.
His manager lumbers in. Dan has known him for the past ten years, ever since he first went on television. Peter is a plump rosy-cheeked man who wears polo shirts all year round and sips cold pressed juices and has schedules micromanaged to the minute. Thanks to his buttery charm and cleverly worded communication he is beloved by everyone, from the children to the parents to the people in the studio.
Dan hates Peter.
But he is also the person who single-handedly raised Dippity Dan and made him the nation’s most beloved children’s television star, so there’s no choice but to treat his old manager’s every word like gold.
“You look like shit.”
“Yeah?” Dan doesn’t bother looking up. He’s too busy scrubbing glitter off his skin. “Maybe you should stuff your fat arse into a sun costume first.”
“I told you to stay home last night. You couldn’t wait till after today to get pissed?” Peter walks over and kicks the dustbin. The beer cans inside rattle, and so do Dan’s nerves.
“You having beer at breakfast?”
“Brats hogged all the juice.”
Peter does not appreciate a perfectly justified excuse. He opens his mouth, and Dan instantly shuts off when the lecture begins. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard every single day of his career. You screwed up the opening choreography again you dumb git. Don’t you dare lose character in front of the producers. Don’t kick the kids either. Stop shagging the single moms. Keep that smile on or you’re fired. You’re already thirty so wise up. Eat one more chip butty and you gonna get too fat to be paid. That also better not be crack I saw stored in your apartment. Are you listening to me or am I talking to a bloody waste of time and space. It’s not Dippity Dan Peter’s talking to now. It’s just plain Dan, and he refuses to entertain for free.
It only took several hours and more earfuls from Peter, but Dan is finally out of the studio. It’s evening by the time he reaches Colchester, a two-hour drive from the city. He never likes staying in London. As soon as there’s a break from work, Dan is out of there like a shot. It’s usually a different town. He doesn’t particularly care as long as it’s a good distance away from Peter and the cameras.
Today though, he’s back in Colchester for the second time to see a girl he met at a bar when he randomly came a few weeks ago. Alice? Alison? He can’t quite remember her name. She was a petite, pretty brunette, and did not watch enough television to know who Dippity Dan was. That was good enough for Dan, so they exchanged numbers. A week ago she told him about a travelling fair that was coming to Colchester for New Year’s, and so he had agreed to come with her today.
Dan finds the fair easily enough. It’s a wonderful spectacle laid over a wide expanse of grassland, lighting up the dull town. Stalls with vibrant banners and colourful tents are spread out the space. Caravans are parked in between, humming with a self-contained energy. Majestic horses go round and round in circles on a merry-go-round. It looks like an elaborate set back at the studio, only without the monstrous cameras and lights. There are people flooding in and out in a continuous flow of traffic. The travelling fair feels all too fleeting. It feels like it could pack up every light and tent and disappear without a trace anytime. It’s all too different from Dan’s studio, firmly nailed into expensive London space for all eternity. The fair has the scent of sweet escape.
It’s twenty minutes past the meeting time now. Whiffs of hot dogs and sizzling burgers are wafting out of the stalls. Dan decides to text the girl. A reply comes almost immediately.
this is annies boyfriend so bugger off u twt
Dan puts his phone back in his pocket. He’s not surprised at this turn of events. It’s a bummer though, because he never has luck with girls. It’s hard enough to get a girl without Dippity Dan getting in the way. There’s no value in being famous if all you do is be a badly costumed Mary Poppins on children’s television. Girls never take him seriously. He can’t once get into bed without being made to recite that stupid line say goodnight to Dippity Dan.
Ali—Annie was different simply for lack of general awareness. But she is also gone now, so Dan has to move on. He decides to make a start with the fair. It would be useless coming all the way out here for no reason.
Dan plunges straight into the fair. He passes stalls filled with games and knick-knacks and giant masses of pink and blue candyfloss. Lights hang from the roofs, shining down like soft spotlights. But these don’t follow his every move. Only the music follows, travelling with him from stall to stall. He stops by a sandwich truck and orders a chip butty. He cradles it in his hands, hot and soft and oozing with butter. Fat, golden brown chips are wedged deep into the toasted buns. Dan has already forgotten about his missing date. He’s about to get his teeth into this bun when Peter’s tinny voice barks into his head. Eat one more chip butty and you gonna get too fat to be paid.
He takes a big bite. The chip butty has magical properties. With every bite he takes Peter’s voice gets smaller and smaller until it completely peters out. Dan chomps away at his cheap sandwich and moves deeper into the fair. Something could be waiting for him here.
He turns the corner and sees a small enclosure. Inside the cage is a mini mock up of a stage embellished with red velvet curtains and a tiny piano, and dancing atop it is a monkey. The monkey wears a gold sequined vest and a black top hat over its small head. It’s doing a little tap dance with a cane as fairgoers coo in awe. Dan stares in fascination at this creature dancing a complicated choreography to jaunty piano music. His feet are stuffed into shiny leather tap shoes. Tippity-tap. Clackety-clack. Tippity-tippity-tap. The monkey segues from a perfect performance to a bow and the audience erupts in applause. A group of middle-aged women around Dan are murmuring as they clap.
“How on earth does this monkey do all that? It doesn’t say anything but it’s probably quite clever, isn’t it.”
“It’s got a master to whip it into shape. Look, there he is standing away from the cage.”
Dan surreptitiously follows their gaze to where a man in a tailored black coat is standing in the shadows. He has a little whip in his gloved hands indeed and is intently watching the monkey from behind, following its every movement. Oddly Dan feels the secondhand scrutiny, warm and sticky on his own skin. The monkey seems to feel it too. Now that its performance is over, it fidgets around as if trying to shrug off its master’s eyes.
Out of the blue a child screams.
“Mummy, it’s Dippity Dan!”
The monkey startles.
Dan startles, and looks down to see a little boy around six with a snotty nose and a 99 Flake ice cream in his chubby hand. He’s pointing straight Dan with his other hand. The discovery has an immediate effect and soon there is a horde of children and parents rushing towards Dan. Sugar-stained little hands are grabbing at him, uppity mothers are reaching out for autographs. They push and push until his half-eaten chip butty falls to the grass with an unceremonious splat.
Dan runs. He shoves his way out of the monkey enclosure, pushing through the chaos and music of the fair. Everything’s somewhat muffled and his steps are heavy as if he’s walking underwater. Eventually he reaches a small clearing at the corner of the fairgrounds.
In the middle of this space standing just a slight distance away from the festivities is a single red telephone box. It’s old and battered with use but the paintwork has been forcefully polished back into a faint gloss. A sign hangs on the door.
TELEPHONE BOX, it says in black marker. PHONE YOUR FUTURE SELF FOR A POUND.
Dan’s first thought is that a pound is a high price for a public payphone. And then he reads the next part of the sign properly. His future self? If he could call an older, wiser Dan then perhaps a pound is a bargain. Perhaps he can tell current Dan how to get rid of Dippity Dan and get himself out of this overworked, unpleasant life. He’s come all the way out to a strange fair in Colchester so he might as well while he’s here.
The telephone box is unoccupied—there doesn’t seem to be anyone around in the first place—so Dan enters the booth. He slots in a pound coin and belatedly wonders what number he should call. There are no instructions. He shrugs and dials his own number.
The phone rings. And rings and rings and rings. No one’s picking up. Does future Dan exist? Maybe he’s dead. A feeling of dread crawls into Dan’s liver. Maybe it was one Jim Beam too many. The doctors are always on at him to quit being an alcoholic. But it’s either the bottle or death by Dippity Dan-induced insanity.
“Hello?”
Oh. He’s still alive.
Dan hurriedly presses the receiver close to his ear. He’s suddenly nervous. That sounded like his voice. But a harsher, more gravelly version of his voice. He should return the greeting.
“It’s me. Dan. 30-year-old Dan.”
“Bloody ‘ell. What’re you calling me for?”
“I’m sick of Dippity Dan. I’m already thirty but I have nothing. No girl, no freedom, no dignity. Nothing but a tosser of a manager and kids that aren’t even in mine.”
Old Dan hacks a gargled cough straight into the receiver. He must be around sixty or something.
“Not helping you there. I’m rich and retired and I’m not going to undo any of it by helping you with early retirement.”
“What?”
“It’s a shithole all right but I stayed in that for over fifty years so you’re just gonna have to do the same, mate. You’ll thank yourself.”
“Yeah well I haven’t heard a thank you—”
Click. The call cuts off and Dan is left to stew in burning resentment. So much for a phone call to the future. There’s nothing left to do at the fair anymore. With a resigned slump of the shoulders Dan leaves Colchester for the night and heads back to London, where the remaining decades of his life is waiting for him.