Lily Allen - "Air Balloon". The boys gathered by the fence, clawing fingers into the chain-link, watching the circus take shape. Plastic cases lowered from trucks, animal cages checked for sturdiness, horses fed and brushed, the giant big-top slowly, almost eminently, unfurled. The circus people did not seem like the boys' mothers and fathers: the visitors were stocky, big-shouldered, with tufts of thick black hair. They wore dungarees or stripes. They had every colour of eyes. Now and then someone would glance at the boys by the fence, smile, ask them if their parents were going to bring them to see the show. The boys tried to work out which of these stooped, wheezing, hefting persons was Clara The Equine Duchess, which one was Alphonse the Ring-Master, whether those men candying apples were Bozo and Bub. Hand-painted versions of the circus stars stared down at them from the side of the trailer. Mostly the boys tried to peep Lil Peep, the show's dancing acrobat, whose picture showed an incredible beauty of slightly dubious proportions, long-legged and buxom; but they never saw a woman who looked like that, not in all their spying. Just a shorter girl in tiny polka-dots and taffeta, now and then through gaps in canvas sheets, dancing like she was wearing ruby slippers. [album out soon / official website]