Funny how you hold onto ideas, simmering away for years until they suddenly burst into flowers of insight.

With Eva it was clowns. For her 9^th birthday she was taken to a circus and hated it . She found the fleet of clowns particularly distasteful and the reason for this seemed to be that clowns simply could not be trusted; they were not what they seemed with exaggeratedly painted, upturned mouths for smiles or huge tear drops to stand in for emotions. It wasn’t fear – it was distrust, a feeling that Eva thought about occasionally and eventually would associate with words such as dishonesty, gas lighting, fakery or deception. 

Clowns in stories or art rarely argued for a more sympathetic appraisal.  They were villains or emotional grifters.  On a trip to Southend pier, Eva witnessed a slot machine which, if fed a coin, started a clown figure into rolling about with faked laughter until the money ran out. Some laughed, but Eva sensed malevolence and moved away.