Skating?

I watched a film last night showing ice skating in New York...it was beautiful, elegant and graceful . And then I started laughing. My own attempts were none of the above....

There was a lot of ice in North Wales but none of it was on a flat surface, the sledging we did most winter weekends was down hills.

In a town nearby there was a skating rink though and that was where I took my children.

You could hire boots and getting onto the ice was fairly easy. It was what happened after that that was the problem.

I was not good. My son, always lithe and athletic mastered it fairly quickly. My daughter was not as easy in her movements but she could do it, often hand in hand with her brother.

I on the other hand was not good. In fact I was spectacularly bad...

I hung onto the side and edged my way round where I could see what my children were up to....

They could actually skate.

Their best trick was to pull me away from the safety of the bar around the edge and tow me protesting into the middle of the rink. There they left me...roaring with laughter whilst they wizzed past me as I struggled to get back to the safety of the edge.

Afterwards they told me it was only like throwing someone into the deep end...and not to worry I was not going to drown!

Needless to say that when I lived in Essex I remained a spectator in frosty weather when sheets of ice covered fields. The speed skating I saw then bore no relationship to anything seen in North Wales...

If someone tells me there is a skating rink somewhere near here I shall not be going down memory lane on my own!

 

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