Growing Old Disgracefully

11 May 2006

After all those long days and more status reports than NASA would deem necessary, our major sales drive at work is over and tomorrow I start two glorious weeks of leave. What a wonderful opportunity to catch up on reading, start a course, maybe do some volunteer work...the sensible person would be doing these things.

But I'm not sensible. I bought a pair of rollerskates. Not blades, skates. They're blue with red glitter trim and wheels, SO gorgeous. I've actually wanted a pair for a long time, so it was a strange twist of fate that led me to them now...I first decided I wanted a pair about two years ago, and saw some on sale in a local sports shop. I told my mother and she offered to buy them for me for my 25th birthday, but then circumstances intervened before she could get to the store. When I realised I returned to the store to buy them myself, but they were gone. For the next year I looked for another pair EVERYWHERE but never found one and gave up.

Until last week, whilst shopping in my local mall and my shoe buckle broke, so I went into a shoe store to get another pair of shoes whilst mine were being repaired...and saw the skates. I'd never seen rollerskates in that shop before, and there was only one pair, in my size. It's like they were waiting for me, and I never would have found them if my shoe hadn't broken (A similar set of circumstances led to me finding the lost song - things I've given up on seem to have a way of coming into my life when I least expect it).


I haven't had a chance to use them yet, but all my time off will be the perfect opportunity. Sure I'm a bit rusty, having not been near a pair of real rollerskates since the late 1980s, but I've been practising around the house, which seems to startle Xander (did you know cats are afraid of rollerskates? Me neither). I've always loved to skate. Newcastle is such a great place for skating these days, you can get start at Honeysuckle and go all along the harbour and Shortland Esplanade to Newcastle Beach. The one thing that did put me off was worrying that I would look, lets face it, pretty stupid (a nearly-30 woman on skates, picture it) but then I thought, who the hell cares? If anyone laughs at me (and in Newcastle there's always someone to have a go at you about something) I'll just ignore them. I'm an eccentric and I'll do eccentric things!

Not everyone seems to agree. I had this conversation with Rex:

Him: Skates? But you can't keep your balance in your regular shoes.
Me: I'm a pretty reasonable skater actually. And it's good exercise.
Him: Until you break your wrist or ankle and can't exercise at all for 6 weeks.
Me: I won't hurt myself.
Him: What about the other people?
Me: Okay, how about when I'm skating, and you can run in front of me waving a flag to warn people?
Him: Then who would call the paramedics?

Always wonderful to have the support of your dearest friends! Anyway, I bet he's just jealous. The skates will keep me young...OUCH! I think I broke my hip!

3 comments:

  1. hehehe... finally! i would join you but skye has brought her skates to england with her :(
    what shoe size are you, by the way?
    *nudge nudge wink wink*

    ReplyDelete
  2. Get Vati to buy you some skates. Or put wheels over the blades of your ice skates.

    ReplyDelete
  3. nico! where HAVE you disappeared to?

    ReplyDelete


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