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...