Nightmares for me tonight then…

I’ve just been browsing on the bbc news website and found this article. I’ve always been afraid of clowns ever since I can remember – I even had to scroll down the page to hide the horrible pictures on the site before I could read the article – and now its got me trying to remember what caused me to find a bit of face paint and a red nose quite so scary as a child that I still can’t stomach the sight of them as an adult.

I’ve never actually met a clown so its not from personal experience, and I’ve never watched the film It because I knew it was about clowns… so god knows what it stemmed from.

Its not only clowns though, its masks in general that I find disturbing. Venice with darling boyf was wonderful – apart from all the mask shops that the city is famous for. I’m sure I missed half the sights because I kept shutting my eyes to avoid looking at them! And my friends’ 30th masquerade party was great fun – once everyone stopped wearing the damn masks. Maybe its the fact that you can’t see a person’s true expression when they’re wearing a mask that bothers me… then again maybe its just that clowns are always smiling and something that never gets pee’d off has to be evil right?

One thing I did learn though is that my irrational fear actually has a name ‘coulrophobia’… now that’s one to add to my list of neuroses