Here’s a snatch of one of our forthcoming publications, Confessions of an Ageing Figure Skater. If you want to read the next episodes, all you need to do is make a one-off £10 subscription payment and we’ll guarantee to send you all the on-line future episodes of the book; and once the book is finished, we’ll send you your very own free copy!
So, strap on those skates, join our team and enjoy Confessions of an Figure Skater!
Episode 1: Georgy Girl
“Hey there, Georgy girl, swinging down the street so fancy free.”
One thing I know for certain is that England won the FIFA World Cup on Saturday 30 July in 1966 with a Geoff Hurst hat trick, a toothless Nobby Stiles, and a crocked Jimmy Greaves who never made it to the final. His disappointment was very public and a reason for mourning in my bedroom – me being an ardent Tottenham Hotspur fan. My dad was more dismissive: “never in the field of human conflict was so much promised by so few to so many with so little to show for it”, he’d fondly misquote Winston Churchill. He was an ardent Liverpool supporter and, after all, they had won the English League Division One and the same year. The World Cup didn’t have the same meaning to him as his team winning the League for reasons I couldn’t fathom at the time, despite him uttering “Scouse not English” and tapping his nose knowingly several times over when he used to quote Churchill.
Anything after that date is guesswork. The time that followed was marked by a series of unsettling events at home: a pattern of late-night whispered voices on Sunday nights, rapid packing of bags, jangling of keys and having breakfast on Monday in a new home and starting a new school on the Tuesday.
This happened at least three times after we won the World Cup and after that I lost count.
The routine of voices, jangling keys and new starts produced an ongoing inner disappointment and a reminder to oneself not to get too bedded into the new place because we would soon be moving again. Sometimes we moved in and out so quickly, we left our shadows behind. Though, if nothing else, at least there was some stability in that routine.This growing sense of embedded disappointment soon lifted when we were cheerfully informed that our dad had secured an excellent new job with glorious prospects as the manager at the Top Rank Brighton Ice Rink on the south coast of England
Episode 2: Rose Garden.
Want to subscribe to this series? Just drop us your details here:
Subscribe to get access
Read more of this content when you subscribe today.