ThurSkate

Hello. This week I have decided to consider taking up roller derby.  For those of you who are not American, or have not seen the film Whip It, roller derby is a sport introduced to me by my dearest friend Courtney, who communicated its wonder through the medium of fancy dress parties and pseudonyms.  With such an introduction, I was sold. 

As far as I understand (and admittedly, at this stage, I don't understand very much), this is a sport that involves being kick-ass and aggressive on quad roller skates, skating around and around in a circle and elbowing other people out of the way, like pushing in the lunch queue, to earn points by over-taking members of the other team.

Wow. Think of all the ingrained behaviours that this sport will allow me to subvert!  

Ingrained British behaviour: "Oh dear, that looks awfully boisterous. I think I'll sit this one out and have a cup of tea. Monopoly's my competitive sport, what, what!"

Roller Derby behaviour: "Bring it!"

Ingrained British behaviour: "Let's just wait patiently behind these ladies until it's our turn. I do love a good queue. It gives one such precious time to reflect on the beauty of small things."

Roller Derby behaviour: "MOVE, bitch!"

Exciting!

The reason for considering such a new skill is due to the impending months of thumb twiddling/friendlessness that is likely to accompany the Great Shift, which is the name I am giving to my move from Saigon to Brisbane via Singapore, which, were it included in a work of literature, would represent many a thing, like my transition from Northern to Southern Hemisphere, one person to two person meal preparation and, if there turns out to be nothing better to do, strategic baby avoidance to strategic baby expelling.  So multilayered.  I thought this Shift would be a great time to invest in all those things that I've always wanted to do, but never had the balls/time/opportunity: write a book that no one will read, paint a picture to hang in the downstairs toilet, learn to make my own bassoon reeds and, of course, join a roller derby team. 

Roller derby, I think, is the sport for me. It will allow me to build a friend-base of like minded, aggressive, intimidatingly sized, tattoed women and it will allow me to nurture one of the following doppelgängers (you have to have a sort of, beasty stage name to be a roller derby-er):

1. The Killer Queen

2. The EMMAncipator

3. ExtrEMMAsis

4. Danger-Dechans

What do you think?  Votes cast on your preferred form of social media, please.  Once I have my name, all I have to do is skate confidently and really fast. This is a small barrier to my success, I feel, especially as this week saw the inauguration of my new all-inclusive club, ThurSkate, which takes place at this magical Vietnamese roller disco:

Wow!  I mean, really, WOW!  Once we had discovered this venue of great wonder, Shining Shamrock, Slender Laurel, Poker Face and myself, the founding members of ThurSkate, ate barbeque and jumped on our scooters, whizzing through the Saigon night for our first try at quad skating. 

Oh, what a joy it was!  The skates: amazingly old school and smelly.  The staff: completely bemused by our presence.  The clientele: at least ten years our junior. The music: oh, the music!  For a long time I have not been blessed with the intensity of Vietnamese disco beats this roller disco had to offer and yea verily, it was entirely appropriate to the setting, including the brief moment where the Vietnamese lyrics stopped and the singer introduced the chorus with a determined, 'fuck you'. If I'd understood the rest of the song, I'm sure this would have made sense, but as it was, this unexpected little expletive broke my concentration and I fell onto my bum, arms wheeling madly like a panicking seagull.  

Check it out!  The scene is so disco, you can't even differentiate people from awesomeness.

My bruised bum was the only casualty of the evening, though; the rest of the night was spent going round and around and around and around on skates, staring at my toes and the floor about 50cm in front of me, and holding my arms out in a sort of unstable scarecrow pose. 

I, for one, think I'm going to be ready for roller derby in no time...