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Naomi Grigg's skating years

Part 4

by Naomi Grigg

 

The grapevine. What a move. Seeing that move for the first time was one of those amazing moments of inspiration where you feel your hairs prick up and you get that excited fluttering feeling like you’ve just fallen in love. I think his name was Richard, and we’d just met him. He fancied Cheri and was trying to impress her. Asking her over in smokers’ corner if she would snog him hadn’t worked, so I guess he was appealing to her interest in skating. I knew he was just about to do a trick, so as usual my practiced eyes were peeled, ready to take in and remember exactly what his feet were doing so I could learn to repeat it over the coming weeks – but nothing prepared me for what he did with his feet. The adrenaline coursed through me as his feet and legs did the impossible in front of me on the ice. It was like he was floating, and his legs were made of rubber. It was complete magic. I couldn’t believe that what I was seeing was actually possible. Wow. If I was EVER able to do that, I would have arrived. I would be an elite skater – there could be nowhere beyond that move – surely that was the ultimate?

I think the grapevine is still my favourite move – it’s beauty and simplicity doesn’t have much in the way of competition. We wouldn’t leave him alone for the rest of the session. He briefly showed us how to do it ‘do this then like this then like that and then you start again’ and that was me for six months. I had it very badly after about a month, but I needed another five to get it smooth, for what is a grapevine that is not smooth? Six months later I emerged from the chrysalis to show it off at the weekend sessions. Man, I was good. I was there, I’d arrived. You never get to do something and feel that there is nothing more, like you might have expected before learning it, there is always something else that catches your eye in an ‘I want to be able to do that’ way, but it was always so great to remember how I’d felt about the people who could do it, before I’d learned that move, and bask in the knowledge that I was now one of those people.

 

Those 3 years at the Swindon ice rink were a real turnaround time for me, as until I took up skating I had always focussed on my failures. Those times that you had said something utterly embarrassing, or how crap I was with boys, or how crap I was at sports, or how I couldn’t write essays or learn French. With skating I was now focussing on my successes – getting a new move to finally work would leave me so exited for the week from session to session during term time – daydreams full of imagining what I could now do if only I had access to ice. I also loved that feeling of acceptance that I felt when I knew that everyone around me wanted to be able to do what I was doing.

Term time at school was a little tough as a result – I found that I almost ached with the need to be on ice during the week. I needed that sense of release and expression that I got at the rink, and in my second to last summer at school I bought a pair of Bauer H2 roller hockey skates from the skate shop at the rink. They looked identical to my ice skates, and I removed the brake and rockered them right there in the shop. At home that evening I was able to barrelroll, grapevine and 180 in them within half an hour. They were so easy! Much more forgiving that iceskates, though I felt they lost a bit of the magic in the process – perfectly good for relieving the midweek cravings.

 

 

The midweek cravings went unchecked though. I couldn’t bring myself to put my skates on in public at school. I knew I’d stumble around feeling like a weirdo and be too self-conscious to enjoy myself or learn a thing. Until one night… I discovered that one of the doors that lead into the sports hall didn’t get locked. It was a bit strange not having any music on, and I needed to steer clear of one end of the hall to avoid being seen, but otherwise it was great. It was somewhere I could skate where I was completely alone and other than a few friends, no-one knew I was there.

 

Back to part 3

To Part 5

 

Naomi's website: http://www.skatefreestyle.com/

Summary of articles by/about Naomi on this website

 

 

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