‘No, madam, that would be quite dangerous’
A Canadian finds Brits’ skating habits, including unsharpened skates, odd
BATH, ENGLAND— The fairy lights are twinkling, the holiday music is pumping and the ice is so smooth that it reflects the cloud above like a flock of baffled sheep. My family has managed to book a coveted slot at “Bath on Ice” in Victoria Park. (Bath is in South West England, a little over an hour from London.) It’s been a year since I’ve been on ice, which — for a Canadian — is unthinkable.
I grew up outside a small town near Toronto. Our hobby farm had its own almost lake-sized pond. Once the pond froze, we checked it every day, which usually meant the loser of a thumb war had to wander out onto the ice with a scarf tied around their waist in case they fell through, until it was thick enough to skate on. Once our patsy survived the first skate, we skated every day after school. Older kids played hockey, toddlers shuffled in their boots, grandmas skated arm in arm with grandpas. Everybody skated.
So imagine my surprise after moving to the U.K. when I first went skating with the Brits. This is an entirely different experience.
First, there’s the size of the pop-up holiday rink: usually a small, round patch of ice in an urban area, such as London or Bath, so heavily populated that everyone must skate in the same direction. Then there’s the fact that no one actually seems to be able to skate. Oh, they “skate;” they shuffle about in a kind of marching motion, laughing and clutching onto the boards or leaning on friends, threatening a domino effect on ice. Then there are those who think they can skate and decide to throw caution to the wind, lurching about closer to the middle of the rink.
Skating in Britain is an exercise in the avoidance of moving objects in a small area whilst skating in a circle. It’s all very charming and festive, but to this Canadian, it feels a little like a haphazard whirlpool.
Still, I’m beside myself with excite- ment to hit the ice while it’s still smooth. Alas, I’ve forgotten my own skates and realize that I’m going to have to use rentals. Last year, I made the same mistake and failed to check the blades before attempting a small waltz jump. I’d been skating with another Canadian and a crowd had amassed to watch us. (Even though I would say we are only very average skaters in Canada.) Of course, it had been a good 30 years since I’d tried jumping on skates, the blades were dull and I landed on my backside, after which the crowd dispersed. Humbling. When the vendor hands me the skates, I ask him if they’ve been sharpened recently.
“No, madam,” he says. “That would be quite dangerous. They might cut you.”
“But,” I protest, “if you don’t sharpen the skates, people will fall, which is surely far more dangerous? How are you supposed to land a jump?”
“You don’t jump, madam,” he says, and gives me a particular look that the British give you when they think your behaviour is “very odd.” (“Odd,” by the way, may only mean “different” in North America, but in England “odd” is wielded like an insult.) Huh.
I hold my tongue and accept the dull blades, then wrestle my 6-yearold into his skates, at which point he insists on renting a “penguin” (a wooden structure that looks like a petrified bird).
The Brits like to push these around in front of them when they are learning to skate or are just uncomfortable on ice. (Which accounts for at least half of the people here, adults or not.) Those using the penguins have to stoop over to reach the handles, causing them to resemble grannies with deranged shopping carts. These penguin-people are the ones to really watch out for, as despite having zombified birds to lean on, they frequently spill over in front of you while you are making mad, frantic circles around the ice. (The traffic never changes direction: it always seems to go counter clockwise. I suspect that this is either because the Brits only ever learn to skate in one direction or it has something to do with the posi- tion of the equator.)
I do a few laps, backwards and forwards, and then I’m approached in a very teetery way by a young couple who ask me, “How do you do it?” I’m not sure what “it” refers to, so I shrug and say, “I’m Canadian.”
At one point, my 6-year-old decides that skating is too challenging and he wants to leave the ice, abandoning his penguin. Growing up in Canada, there certainly weren’t any penguin-y things to hold on to when you were learning to skate. And if — God forbid — you tried to leave the ice after the first 10 minutes of skating, there’d be someone there with a hockey stick to shove you back on. I grew up in the 1970s, so the person with the hockey stick would likely also have had a drink in one hand, a hockey stick in the other and a cigarette dangling from one corner of their mouth. If you fell down, and especially if you fell into the boards, it was considered good practice for hockey.
There were no helmets, unless you were playing in an actual hockey tournament. If you fell face first and broke your nose, it would make you look like a proper hockey player. That’s how we rolled in Canada.
Here, British children wear crash helmets when they are on ice and opt for the penguins when a child in Canada would be well into playing hockey by the same age. Adults swap out their tweed jackets and flat caps for “puffer” coats, Christmas “jumpers” and “bobble” hats, but no one here would dream of trying to balance a long stick while skating (in circles) at the same time. Someone would lose an eye.
Not that the Brits don’t have their own particular style at their skating rinks that make the tradition special. I note that “Bath on Ice” has made one particular improvement at the rink this year: a Tiki bar. Perhaps, as my half-Canadian/ half-British friend suggests, this is why the Brits skate like drunken sailors. Either way, I say, perhaps the Brits do know best on the subject of what to do with ice. You don’t skate on it: you put it in your gin. Elle Wild is a Canadian freelance writer living in Bath, England.