We did something really cute a little while ago for our students. We chose a handful of well-behaved, well-meaning kids and took them 'ice' skating in Gillingham.
You should have seen these kids hacking all over the ice, falling down, losing their balance left-right-and-centre, hugging the boards, etc. It was so cute. A few of them plowed right into me and nearly knocked me over (but my Canadian, figure skating instincts kicked in and I was able to stay standing). We had such a blast. We even got rink fries (treat!).
The most hilarious thing about skating in Kent was renting the skates. The skates were old as dirt and awful, but more importantly they were dull. Like completely dull. I took my rental skates back over to the man and stated
"Excuse me you gave me dull skates." very emphatically.
"They are all dull. We don't sharpen them."
Imagine my face. Just appalled at him. "WHY?"
"It's too dangerous to sharpen them and rent them out."
"It is extremely dangerous NOT to sharpen them, do you understand that?"
"....No...."
"You can't physically skate on dull skates. You will fall on your face! And break EVERYTHING. You need the edge to cut through the ice."
"We don't sharpen our skates."
Sometimes I hate talking to Brits ahah they don't understand anything about the North American way of life and how much better it is than theirs (obviously being an American snot as a joke, but seriously, NOT SHARPENING SKATES? C'MON!)
Anyways, skating was at first a challenge, but I quickly got the hang of skating with no edges (stopping however, a nice snowplow stop was the best I could muster) and got on with it. So disappointing. I wanted to skate backwards, do stupid tricks and show off - c'mon Gillingham, get your act together!
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