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Distraction
Mar. 1st, 2005 01:26 pmI'm writing this to take my mind off the fact I can collect my results in 50 minutes time. Hopefully writing this will distract me long enough to let the levels of panic drop to a more controllable level. I'm terrified I failed the Maths paper, and I have no idea what it will mean if I have. Anyway, distractions.
Something I've been meaning to post for ages that got eclipsed by the spontaneous development of a proper life was my recent ice skating attempt. At the end of consolidation week (about 2 and a half weeks ago now) I went up to Oxford to bring P back to Bath, and we took the opportunity to go ice skating. P loves ice skating, and is much better than she gives herself credit for. However, including that time, I've only been ice skating 3 times, and the first doesn't count I was 14 and wouldn't have trusted my tutor group that I went with to not attempt to knock me over, etc, so never let go of the barrier.
Anyway so I've done now a total of about 2 hours of learning to ice skate. This time the rink was mostly empty, which was much better than the last time when the rink was very busy, though it did have the obligatory five or six year old who's clearly been skating from about the point he could walk if not earlier. He was good, I felt mocked.
So I improved more this time around. It took me a little bit to get to where I was before (moving forward by using one skate at a time), and by the end I was able to move reasonably quickly and use both feet at the same time. The problem I have with ice skating is that I cannot let myself fall, I've never been able to fall intentionally, and so I spend the entire time actively maintaining my balance, apparently from the feel of it, through a combination of using the muscles in my lower back and thighs to move my center of gravity, and through carefully placing my feet. So in effect I have to keep moving my feet to stay upright, which of course means my speed steadily increases, until it exceeds my ability to correct for the shift in my center of gravity, and I have to quickly grab the barrier lest I lose control. So because I can't just glide, or even relax slightly, without risking falling over (which I won't let myself do) and because I have to work continuously to go anywhere ice skating is very, very tiring.
However that was not my true success. My biggest success was the perfection of my technique to catch the barrier and stop myself falling. I could quite literally grab hold of the barrier with one arm and stop myself from falling from about a distance of one to two metres, even leaping past other skaters to do it. Thankfully no one was ever injured (though the ice got seriously gouged in places) by the wild flailing of my legs that inevitably accompanied my desperate dive for salvation.
My inability to let myself fall is an odd one. It always made goalkeeping when playing football at school interesting to say the least, and oddly enough the way I walk actually evolved to make it hard to trip me up. In general if someone or something takes one of my legs out from under me I can normally keep walking with only a minor stumble, and avoid falling over. What I find strange about my inability to let myself fall is how much I fell over as a child. When I was small I seemed to have a perpetually cut/grazed knee, and would inevitably fall over and cut it again in a matter of days of it healing. And when I was toddler much to my parents terror I used to fall over and bang my head all of the time, my preference apparently being to fall head first into glass doors (I almost couldn't get a close to one without falling in to it). They used to worry people would think that they were assaulting me, with the perpetual bruised lumps on my forehead. Thankfully I never actually broke one of the planes of glass, and the only side effect is that I seem to have a very hard head (as anyone who has ever bumped heads with me accidentally will tell you).
That's helped a bit it's typically long and waffly but it's helped to past the time.
Something I've been meaning to post for ages that got eclipsed by the spontaneous development of a proper life was my recent ice skating attempt. At the end of consolidation week (about 2 and a half weeks ago now) I went up to Oxford to bring P back to Bath, and we took the opportunity to go ice skating. P loves ice skating, and is much better than she gives herself credit for. However, including that time, I've only been ice skating 3 times, and the first doesn't count I was 14 and wouldn't have trusted my tutor group that I went with to not attempt to knock me over, etc, so never let go of the barrier.
Anyway so I've done now a total of about 2 hours of learning to ice skate. This time the rink was mostly empty, which was much better than the last time when the rink was very busy, though it did have the obligatory five or six year old who's clearly been skating from about the point he could walk if not earlier. He was good, I felt mocked.
So I improved more this time around. It took me a little bit to get to where I was before (moving forward by using one skate at a time), and by the end I was able to move reasonably quickly and use both feet at the same time. The problem I have with ice skating is that I cannot let myself fall, I've never been able to fall intentionally, and so I spend the entire time actively maintaining my balance, apparently from the feel of it, through a combination of using the muscles in my lower back and thighs to move my center of gravity, and through carefully placing my feet. So in effect I have to keep moving my feet to stay upright, which of course means my speed steadily increases, until it exceeds my ability to correct for the shift in my center of gravity, and I have to quickly grab the barrier lest I lose control. So because I can't just glide, or even relax slightly, without risking falling over (which I won't let myself do) and because I have to work continuously to go anywhere ice skating is very, very tiring.
However that was not my true success. My biggest success was the perfection of my technique to catch the barrier and stop myself falling. I could quite literally grab hold of the barrier with one arm and stop myself from falling from about a distance of one to two metres, even leaping past other skaters to do it. Thankfully no one was ever injured (though the ice got seriously gouged in places) by the wild flailing of my legs that inevitably accompanied my desperate dive for salvation.
My inability to let myself fall is an odd one. It always made goalkeeping when playing football at school interesting to say the least, and oddly enough the way I walk actually evolved to make it hard to trip me up. In general if someone or something takes one of my legs out from under me I can normally keep walking with only a minor stumble, and avoid falling over. What I find strange about my inability to let myself fall is how much I fell over as a child. When I was small I seemed to have a perpetually cut/grazed knee, and would inevitably fall over and cut it again in a matter of days of it healing. And when I was toddler much to my parents terror I used to fall over and bang my head all of the time, my preference apparently being to fall head first into glass doors (I almost couldn't get a close to one without falling in to it). They used to worry people would think that they were assaulting me, with the perpetual bruised lumps on my forehead. Thankfully I never actually broke one of the planes of glass, and the only side effect is that I seem to have a very hard head (as anyone who has ever bumped heads with me accidentally will tell you).
That's helped a bit it's typically long and waffly but it's helped to past the time.
