Juggling

I've not achieved much of note in the past months, but I learnt to juggle a four-ball Mills mess. This requires the juggler to keep crossing and uncrossing the arms like in some song with a custom dance. The routine looks a bit like this (around 1:40 he gets it to work very nicely). According to all reliable sources, the balls which start in one hand are never caught by the other hand, but every time I try to confirm this I drop them all.

Whilst looking for that animation, I read about Rupert Ingalese (a Yorkshireman, note) and his juggling book from the 1920s. Ingalese, although recommending his readers to start with wooden bottles and enamel plates, gives an idea of what people did before there were shops selling special juggling items: it seems they took whatever was lying around at home: lampshades, billiard balls, china plates, champagne bottles and midgets. Nowadays you can easily buy soft balls, plastic rings and weighted clubs, but juggling midgets are hard to come by.



In a laboured effort to connect the previous two paragraphs, I would point out that Ingalese probably never managed a Mills mess, as it was first popularised at some time around 1973. Had he been around at the time, I'm sure he would have mastered it whilst also balancing a couple of lampshades.