I’ve really been enjoying ice skating this past month.

Actually, I just checked my transactions to see when I first went: the first week of October, and since then I’ve been to at least a dozen sessions. It’s difficult for me to tell because two weeks I signed up for lessons, and after that point you get free public ice sessions, so I don’t have a record of those.

The Hackspace is definitely a place where hobbies accrue. You can be working on the laser cutter, and then someone mentions how similar it is to the embroidery machine, and then suddenly you’re combining the two. In this case, a bunch of people in unison (I can’t remember if it was me who instigated it) decided to try out a skating session. Five of us went along, including one very good skater. That was instrumental as he was able to give me starting advice which got me over the initial struggle that might have dissuaded me from going again.

After that, I went to a number of sessions on my own trying to get used to the forward momentum and movement. If there’s ever a sport where “practice makes perfect” is very clear, it’s this one. Each hour made me feel more confident.

Go more often than a normal person would, you notice who else is turning up an unusual amount, and you eventually get talking to them. I remember at many points in my life thinking “how on earth do adults make new friends?” Then after thinking that, I found a wonderful group of friends from Dungeons and Dragons, a brilliant group of friends in the Hackspace, and now a burgeoning group of “ice friends”, as I’ve been calling them. Turns out, all you have to do to make friends is go outside regularly.

Early on, there was a time where a three year old was almost certainly going to collide with me. At this point, I had no idea of how to stop or turn, so I began thinking of what I would say to his parents as I handed them his fingers back. But the little nipper just toe looped right around me.

Since then, I’ve learnt forward reasonably confidently, forward and backwards “lemons”, and I recently learnt backwards mostly. (I have not yet learnt how to stop.)

I’ve been going a bit more than my partner and friends, so I’ve been trying to offer advice to help them catch up. It’s incredibly hard to teach a physical skill. Take “lemons”, for instance. This is a beginner’s movement where you draw a lemon with your skates, a pointy ellipse. It’s essentially teaching the importance of the angle of your feet, and how you can use that angle to push yourself forwards. You can explain all that, but I’ve no idea how to explain which muscles to use to do it.

It’s just lots of practice, I guess.