Now with a title like that you're probably all thinking this is another fascinating tale of how a bunch of us from work went out and got incredibly drunk, and you'd be wrong – we only got mildly drunk, but the *important* bit is that we went to a Roller Disco!
Yes, I'm serious.
As a result of a throwaway conversation with Emma at the office, some research was done, and this was discovered. Always keen to find new ways to humiliate and injure myself, I agreed to go along, and I've gotta say that despite public airing of my inferior motor skills, it was a bit of a hoot.
“Warming up” in the pub across the road we had a healthy contingent of starters, however reasons and excuses seemed fairly easy for people to find (oh boy, I was *this* close to heading off to the Cider & Beer Festival…), but the brave few were assembled, Undies was roped in at the last minute, and the 6 of us wandered down to see what fate had in store for us.
The roller disco thing had been planned for about 2 weeks, so pretty much every day during the leadup I got to hear from Hannah and Emma pretty much every day about what they were going to be wearing, and how much fun it was gonna be, and so on. On the actual day at about 4pm, Emma said “I don't know if I can be bothered going any more – all this being excited has really worn me out… think I'll just go home”. No way, not on my watch.
Anyway, once we finally got there (after a brisk, refreshing, and not at all scary walk along the canal) we discovered there wasn't really anywhere to get changed into our funky threads, so we all ended up skating in whatever we'd worn to work. I love it when a plan comes together.
Right so a bit about the actual skating – it was rollerskating (as quite ditsinct from roller blading), and there were 3 rooms in the building, each with a different DJ. Each room was filled with people skating around in circles – some far more funkily than others, I might hasten to add. Conveniently, access between rooms was by way of a ramp, which is an excellent thing for a new skater to be presented with. They had blokes standing there to help cute girls down and to tell people to get the hell out of the way when idiots in Superman t-shirts arrived.
I guess one good thing about it was that we weren't the only ones there who were obviously beginners. Actually to be fair, Cat and Undies were pretty good for starters, and the rest of us managed varying degrees of capability over the course of the evening. Roger even got some lessons from a friendly young lady…
I was quite happy/slightly surprised that I only fell over twice, and one of them wasn't my fault! About 10 minutes into the evening some girl skated into me and I fell directly on my right knee, so I've got a lovely bruise to show if anyone's interested.
We elected to bail at about 10:30, because it's quite knackering, and it started to get really really crowded – this of course increases your chances of taking someone down with you, and quite frankly that's stress I didn't need.
I'd definitely go back and do it again, although I think I'll wait for all my muscles to stop hurting from this time before braving it again. I think my learned work colleagues have plans to go back in 2 weeks or so, but of course I'll be in Adelaide at that point.
One final observation on the experience – it's just damn well malevolent to set the bathrooms up the way they have. Not sure about the ladies, but to get to the mens you had to skate across. Now let me tell you guys, I feel like I have now stared death in the face. I would contest that there are few things more terrifying than visualising yourself falling over and whacking your bits on the edge of a steel trough. Even now it brings a tear to the eye.
And on that happy note, here endeth the account of Roller Disco.
Just quickly though I suppose I should say something about our housewarming last week – it was totally cool, and a great crowd of people came along and I think we all had lots of fun. We've got enough booze left over to sedate a small elephant though. In answer to the followup enquiries though, we're not having another party for at least another 3 weeks yet.
Certainly not before we've gotten rid of that bag of cat food.
Probably the best description of the night would be the SMS I found on my phone the next morning from Roger at work. It said “cheers dot a gReat a greab eudonck”. Now I have no idea what that's supposed to say, nor does Roger. In fact nobody who I've run it past has the feintest concept of what it means, but we all agree that there's probably no better description of the night than that.
A greab eudonck, indeed.