On thin ice

Beautiful, bright, blue-sky winter day. We went skating on Houhai Lake with Colin & Vanessa and children. I have been skating once and once only, in the late 80s at Streatham Ice Rink. So it was with some trepidation that I donned hired skates and cautiously inched my way onto the frozen lake. Luckily, there were those rickety chair-cum-sledge things which I treated like a zimmer frame. Pathetic! I blame the boots, which didn't fit properly and hurt like hell. Liz, the girls and our friends were all much more confident. Anyway, it was kind of fun, watching some seriously good speed-skaters in their frankly rather revealing skin-suits, and some figure-skaters tossing each other about while performing backwards pirouettes. And I didn't fall over. Lunch afterwards was great, even if we had to share a tiny balcony room with a Canadian ice hockey team.