Skating = Laughter, Fear, Anger, and Fury
Our younger daughters have been going stir crazy hanging around the house following Christmas, so I finally did something about it yesterday morning.“Get your skates onlets go to the big park in town”“Yay!“In reality, “get your skates on” translates to half an hour of waiting for the girls to find clothesalong with shouts from the upstairs landing of “I GOT NO KNICKERS!“followed by another ten minutes of sending them back to getsensible clothes, and then making sure that those clothes are on round the right way, and not inside out. Finally (after another ten minutes strapping skates to feet), we tumble from the front door, and begin our adventure.
Within 200 yards Miss Nine (who got inline skates this year) claims that she can't go any further.“Why?”“My back hurts, the path is too bumpy, there are too many twigs on the floor, I can't skate that far!”“What if I hold your hand?”“OK”And so we continued. I saywe continued, because during this entire time Miss Eight had already covered perhaps 2 miles, and her hands had covered perhaps 15 mileswindmilling and flailing around to help her total and utter lack of balance. Her lack of balance doesn't slow her down at all; it's kind of like watching the internal workings of a fly-by-wire jet fighterthey should use her as an example to student pilots of what the computer inside an unstable fighter jet is doing.
I have no idea how she stays upright, but she does.
We eventually arrived at the “Big Park” (several square miles of park land, and smooth tarmac paths), and the girls were suddenly goneall complaints of aches and pains were silenced as they charged off ahead, only brought to a stop by flooding at the river's edge. While we sat on a bench for a breather, Miss Eight continued on her nuclear powered adventure, skating across the grass to the bronze statue of Steve Redgrave that watches over the river below. On approach she lost all semblence of stability, and clattered into the statuehugging it's legs to avoid a spectacularly muddy journey home.
Such close shaves didn't appear to have registered in Miss Nine's headwhile travelling back through the park her bravado got the better of hera brave attempt on the land speed record went suddenly awry, taking her through several yards of liquid mud, and a wince inducing encounter with a rubbish bin. She stayed upright, and didn't think our laughter was funny at all.
I thought we were going to get home without any major accidents, grazes, or torn kneesbut the universe had other ideas. With perhaps 200 yards left of our mile journey home, Miss Nine seemed to get run into by an invisible dog. She grabbed for the fence at the side of the path, and didn't quite reach itand started running towards the fence to regain her balanceon roller skates. The run turned into a flat out sprint, accompanied by a worried shout for methe only thing missing was the Flintstones xylophone sound effect. She ended her sprint with a defeated Superman dive onto the path, landing in the only patch of rotten wet leaves for several hundred yards.
I burst out laughing, as did Miss Eight. It didn't help. The remainder of the journey was spent trying to defuse the loudest, screamiest, angriest little girl in the known universe. She invented a new (very long) word;“IHATETHESESKATESIMNEVERGOINGONTHEMAGAINIHATESKATINGWHYISTHEPATHSOBUMPYANDWHYCANTSOMEBODYPICKALLTHESTICKSUP!“She then began stamping the floor in fury with the skatesonly to burst out laughing with us when she realised what she was doing. Five minutes later we defused the angry bomb with a hot chocolate, lunch, and a rubbish movie. It's amazing how that tends to work.