Going about your own soul-searching

I used to be a member of a group called Salammbo, a street-performance group, dancers, acrobats, you know the type. I used to dance and perform feats of gymnastics, sometimes with a snake (his name was Henri), sometimes virtually topless, it's where I found a skill in me to make costumes, and I began my leatherwork enterprises, which I now do here in London.

In Salammbo, there were six performers, and four musicians, and we travelled across southern Europe with our performances, often going back to receptive towns across Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Malta and Croatia. We enjoyed a fair amount of popularity, and we managed to support ourselves with the monies our audiences gave our way.

We got noticed, and on several occasions performed privately at various parties for benefactors who used our performances as entertainment for their guests, and we met some very interesting, and wealthy people, during our travels. Our success was also the route of our eventual breakup, as we often met talent scouts who actually wanted to view individuals within the group, to poach them for other performances, in shows and ballets, in the varied places we visited on a regular basis.

Salammbo eventually broke up after a very short time together, but we enjoyed three wonderful summers performing live in the streets in Lisbon, Seville, Ronda, Gibraltar, Marseille, Nice, Naples, Messina, Valleta, and Rovinj and Split. Henri escaped in Croatia, and the snake act couldn't afford to rent a snake for performances.