Get your skates on

It was not without some trepidation that I stepped onto the ice today.

My last experience had been back in the 90s when an attempt to woo a red-headed girl called Tilly by skating really fast had gone awry when my toe pick lodged in the ice and I fell flat on my face. I knocked the wind out of myself and banged my chin. It hurt. My early misguided attempts at woo-ing failed, Tilly disappeared into the ether and I haven’t skated on ice since.

Then a recent combination of watching children’s ice hockey comedy drama The Mighty Ducks and LadyV saying that Planet Ice in Blackburn were doing a good deal, reared its head and tickets were booked, plans were made to meet and ice skates were donned.

It was a slow start, but pretty soon the motions came back to me and I was able to slide n glide with a quiet grace. The wee ones bombed around in their zimmer frames for ice and had a great time chasing and spinning around. Even The Eldest was with us and after a nervy start was able to make her way around and begin to skate properly, she did have a fall - which I was devastated to miss - but was fine after.

Lady V and I got a little time on the ice together, which was made easier by the fact that I’d put the woo-ing work in pre-skating. This system worked much better for me as I got the girl and survived the whole two and a bit hours without falling (!), even throwing in a couple of spins and attempts to go backwards. It was tremendous fun.

We were starving afterwards, so took over a large booth at Pizza Hut and proceeded to raid the various buffets before setting off home.

Fab day!