Curling

Yesterday the local curling club had its annual open day.  One of the women in our knitting cafe group is very, very interested in curling and invited us all to go.  As I quite like watching it on the telly, if it is on, I thought I may as well give it a go.  I like boule and the curling players scuttle around very easily on the telly, so hey, what's not to like.
I can't really say that the curling club are big on advertising, or signage, but thanks to a very nice, young security man, I found the hall.  Another very nice young man showed me the hall, and found me a pair of shoes, whilst I waved at Anita and Gitten through the glass.  Then I went out into the hall, got my protective headband and broom thing and had to step on the ice.  At which point, I realised something.  Ice is slippery, I hate slippery.  The entire skuttling easily over the ice thing was a big con!
One of the shoes is the grippy shoe and the other is the slidy shoe (technical names!). What is that all about?  and to slide the stone, you have to slide too! on the ice! which is slippery! and I'm terrified of slipping! Arggghhhh!  Anita, Gitten and yet another nice young man looked at me, I looked at them, they looked at me, I looked at them and said, 'there's ice', "yes" said Anita, "curling is played on the ice". "Yes" I said, "I know, I'd just forgotten that ice is slippery". "what?" said Gitten, "you'd forgotten?  since last winter?". "yes, it looks so no slippy on the telly".  Nice young man III was totally bemused at this point and didn't really know what to do, so I took pity on him and slide my left foot about a bit, whilst leaning heavily on my broom and wobbling, at which point he looked a bit panicy, so I asked him what one did next before falling over, so he sensibly decided to ignore that bit and showed me how to push the stone thing.  I bobbled over to the pushy-offy bits and tried to imitate him, but forgot to let go of the stone, so was dragged spreadeagled across the ice for miles, with the howls of laughter from my 'friends' echoing in the hall.  The second attempt was better, apart from the getting up from the push bit, but I then got the hang of using the grippy foot to lean on - yay, Winter Olympics here I come!
My hopes of a future career were dashed within a few minutes, I sent my stone winging down the ice and promptly toppled over just as the 'big man in curling' came in and gazed down from his lofty heights in the viewing bit. Sigh.
Anyway, it was great fun, although as I never mastered the actual sliding bit, I couldn't do any sweeping frantically in front of the stone, but I have long realised that you can't get everything in life. And there's always next year...

A Day in the Village

On Saturday, Bottnaryd, our nearest village, had a 'fun' day to raise money for the equivalent to the UK's Cancer Research. There was a whole day's programme and all the shops got involved, the shop and the pizza place donated a portion of the day's takings, the beauty palour did 10min massage/hair things and the gym had spinning classes and stuff.  The Pentecostal Church did the cafe for the morning and the Swedish Church in the afternoon, there were concerts by local talent, inspirational talks from people who wanted to cycle from here to Paris, who had survived cancer and stuff, a fun run, a jumble sale, the scouts had fun games and popcorn and there was even a bouncy castle.

Graham was already booked to work down the church (they are redoing the grounds at the front), so he had the car, and managed to contribute to the effort by eating pizza for lunch - he does have a hard life!  I decided that, as I'd managed to change the voice in my head to 'look after yourself', I would cycle.  It's only 5km and only 2 hills after all.  It was a bit grey and cloudy for the first time in 4 weeks, but that was OK.  So I decked myself out in my best 'sitting in a cafe, listening to live music, being charitable, whilst occasionally throwing balls at things' look and set out.  The air dampness started halfway up the first hill (yes, I was walking! live with it!), it coalesced into drizzle on the straight over the lake and became serious drizzle at the top of the second.  It was possibly a bit damp...  Fortunately part of the look was my old Post Office duffle, which is guaranteed to keep out all Welsh weather - drizzle? pah, it laughs.

It was great fun, music was good, the Pente coffee brilliant, scout games fun, fun, fun and I chatted with loads of people.  The dampness and need to not look in a mirror got too much and I left for home at 2, so couldn't compare the Swedish Church coffee and hear the country band (shame...???  who were also very good examples of the genre), but it was actually great fun cycling home.  I felt terribly, terribly french, probably the combination of turtle neck jumper, moleskin skirt and wicker basket.  and for a village of about 800 inhabitants (plus us country odds and sods), they raised over 75000SEK!