Park & Ride

Thursday and Friday brought Jasmin Vardimon's Park back to London and, as threatened, I dragged various people along, including a couple of readers of this blog; another spurned my offer of a ticket on account of having booked his own based on my previous recommendation. (I hope you didn't regret it too much, Max.) I, at any rate, had fun seeing it again, and most of my companions seemed to have a good time.

Elsewhen -- okay, it was Saturday lunchtime -- I taught step for the first time in weeks and really enjoyed it. I've been contemplating retirement from the whole aerobics instruction thing lately, partly because I just don't have the time to do it properly these days, partly because -- as a cover teacher -- I never know what classes I'll be called to teach and some of them aren't much fun. Giving up is still pretty much on the cards, I reckon -- I'm really too old for this kind of nonsense -- but it was nice to be reminded of why I liked doing it in the first place. There may still be a couple of classes in the old dog yet.

Another kind of nonsense that I'm really too old for is trampolining. I'm bloody well not going to give that up, of course, but it can make itself felt sometimes. Tuesday's session was excellent fun, not least because there are, at long last, two beds again. One got broken many months ago (in transit, not while someone was on it; having people bounce up and down on them is what trampolines are built for, the danger times are getting them out and putting them away) and its replacement was so long coming we began to doubt it would ever arrive. Meanwhile, the trampolining club became abnormally popular, making for some rather tedious sessions, interminable waits for an all-too-brief turn and no chance to practice anything. The new bed is friendlier, more forgiving, less pingy than the other, and is pretty nice to bounce on. There were also fewer people this week, so it was all go.

I've made some very gradual progress. I'm now fairly happy practising my back somersaults unsupervised, if not happy with the (frankly rubbish) somersaults themselves, and have started working on a move called the barani (a front somersault with a half twist), which is terrifying and frustrating in equal measure. I can occasionally land one, very inelegantly, but merely attempting it is guaranteed to destroy my normal front somersaults for the rest of the night. Apparently that's quite common, which doesn't make it any less aggravating.

In any case, at some point during the session -- doing cradles, I think -- I knackered my back somehow and it's been painfully gnarled-up since. Wednesday morning I could barely get out of bed, though once I did everything eased off a fair bit. This is not, strictly speaking, evidence of being too old -- the same thing happened to me five years ago and the intervening period has been fine, it's just one of many occupational hazards when bouncing -- but it does leave me feeling a little creaky. Not enough, obviously, to stop me doing other things, just enough to nag in the back of the mind:

Hey ho.

This afternoon brought an expat Thanksgiving party in Kensal Rise, courtesy of American tourist and occasional WT visitor Robin (or, more properly, his hosts), which was grotesquely gluttonous and beset by several thousand small children, and generally a very fine occasion. The evening involved my semi-regular dinner meet with local family including, of course, little Samson, who was as adorable as ever.

And, um, that's pretty much it.
Posted by matt at November 27, 2005 11:49 PM