Ice Skating Queen

On Saturday evening Ella went ice-skating with her friends from her Tae Kwon Do class. I had thought, from the way the session was presented to parents, that the whole idea was that the children were going to get tuition from their Tae Kwon Do teachers, but no! We all turned up, Mr Tigh (the teacher) donned his skates, and buggered off, leaving around a dozen of the younger children wholly unable to ice-skate. Apparently the parents were supposed to be a) supervising and b) teaching - not really a goer since few of us had either intended to stay for the session or could skate!














I thought the whole evening was about to collapse into a nightmare of disappointed kids, especially since I was supervising Ella's friend Thomas, who was staying over with us after the session, but then the children really surprised and impressed me by saying that they would be fine on the ice by themselves.

As you can see, they had beginner's 'frames' which were like zimmer-frames for novice skaters. Although they look unwieldy, they were wonderful!



















Ella and Thomas skated for an hour and a half with one 5-minute break, before I took them home, warmed them up and put them to bed. They were very tired, and so was I...


















I was so proud of Ella: she spent ages right in middle of things, falling over, getting up again, laughing and pushing off. No tears, no tantrums, no nervousness. I think back to what I was like as a child and there's no way I'd have been that brave. My last (and one of few) skating experiences were as a sixth former travelling by coach to the Southampton Gaumont rink and teetering around the edge in fear, not helped by watching someone lose a couple of fingers in an accident. Slippery, cold ice - works best in a Gin and Tonic as far as I'm concerned!