Not too l8 to sk8
Jul. 10th, 2004 04:54 pmFirst, thanks:
- To
k425 for M&S vouchers which arrived yesterday -- I posted the figurines (and the weird many-sided die for
oldbloke) today, sorry I've taken so long to get round to it.
- And huge thanks to
rmc28 who voluntarily went to the trouble of picking up my phone from work and delivering it to me last night! You really didn't have to but I'm very grateful. Karma++. :-)
Second, I have been buying neat stuff:
I bought a GIANT BADGER for just £1.99 in the Red Cross shop. It's a pyjama-case in the shape of a badger, about 2ft long and with scary eyebrows. At night he will sit on the other pillow and scare off nightmares for me, and in the daytime he will keep my pyjamas happily undigested in his stomach. The man in the Red Cross tried to sell it to me for just a pound but it definitely said on the sign that 'medium' toys were a pound and 'large' ones were £1.99, and a two-foot badger is definitely 'large'. The chap seemed disproportionately grateful that I was choosing to pay the right price. People are funny sometimes.
I also bought a pair of Bauer inline skates for £3.99 in the Burleigh Street Oxfam! I mean... BAUERS! In my size! For under a fiver!! ... Okay, for those who are looking baffled now, let me explain. When I was in my early teens, my friends in the village -- bestest-friend-Sylvia, and Matt-from-the-pub, and Miles and Mark who were both rather cute really -- used to go rollerskating. They all had Bauers, serious -- and expensive -- inline skates with proper bearings and all kinds of neat accessories ... and I had pink-and-blue-and-white girly rollerboots. They didn't quite have Barbie embossed on them, but it was close. It was like having a Raleigh Princess when all your mates had BMXs. (Oh, hang on, I did have a Raleigh Princess when all my mates had BMXs. Hmph.) Anyway, eventually I got some cheap inline skates but they Just Weren't The Same; the wheels didn't roll as smoothly, and the colours were all wrong -- garish fluorescents instead of serious, scary black. To be fair to my friends, they didn't exert any peer-pressure on me to get the Right sort of skates -- they really didn't care at all. So I did go skating with them, and they didn't laugh at me, but I always felt that I'd skate so much better and feel so much better if I had the proper boots. Besides, four-square rollerboots were for girls; they were staid, balanced, sensible. Whereas Bauer blades -- well, those were boys' skates, and you could lean over as you went round corners as if you were on a motorbike. They were cool.
The funny thing is, they looked like serious bits of equipment when I was younger. Now they look like plastic toys for kids. But the wheels still go like greased lightning. :-) Now I just need to find somewhere I can skate without getting laughed at by small children...
- To
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- And huge thanks to
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Second, I have been buying neat stuff:
I bought a GIANT BADGER for just £1.99 in the Red Cross shop. It's a pyjama-case in the shape of a badger, about 2ft long and with scary eyebrows. At night he will sit on the other pillow and scare off nightmares for me, and in the daytime he will keep my pyjamas happily undigested in his stomach. The man in the Red Cross tried to sell it to me for just a pound but it definitely said on the sign that 'medium' toys were a pound and 'large' ones were £1.99, and a two-foot badger is definitely 'large'. The chap seemed disproportionately grateful that I was choosing to pay the right price. People are funny sometimes.
I also bought a pair of Bauer inline skates for £3.99 in the Burleigh Street Oxfam! I mean... BAUERS! In my size! For under a fiver!! ... Okay, for those who are looking baffled now, let me explain. When I was in my early teens, my friends in the village -- bestest-friend-Sylvia, and Matt-from-the-pub, and Miles and Mark who were both rather cute really -- used to go rollerskating. They all had Bauers, serious -- and expensive -- inline skates with proper bearings and all kinds of neat accessories ... and I had pink-and-blue-and-white girly rollerboots. They didn't quite have Barbie embossed on them, but it was close. It was like having a Raleigh Princess when all your mates had BMXs. (Oh, hang on, I did have a Raleigh Princess when all my mates had BMXs. Hmph.) Anyway, eventually I got some cheap inline skates but they Just Weren't The Same; the wheels didn't roll as smoothly, and the colours were all wrong -- garish fluorescents instead of serious, scary black. To be fair to my friends, they didn't exert any peer-pressure on me to get the Right sort of skates -- they really didn't care at all. So I did go skating with them, and they didn't laugh at me, but I always felt that I'd skate so much better and feel so much better if I had the proper boots. Besides, four-square rollerboots were for girls; they were staid, balanced, sensible. Whereas Bauer blades -- well, those were boys' skates, and you could lean over as you went round corners as if you were on a motorbike. They were cool.
The funny thing is, they looked like serious bits of equipment when I was younger. Now they look like plastic toys for kids. But the wheels still go like greased lightning. :-) Now I just need to find somewhere I can skate without getting laughed at by small children...