I love Roller Derby Saturdays. Love heading off to meet my friends outside Tesco's with a Tupperware container full of vegan cupcakes so we can go fourways on a bottle of vodka and eight cans of Red Bull.
I love joining the long snaking queue to get into the hall and bumping into old friends and snapping photos of impossibly good girls in faded band t-shirts and customised vintage dresses. Love, love, love seeing the Roller Derby Girls in the fishnets and kneepads and little dresses gliding down the corridor and I really love the bemused looks on the faces of the families who had only popped into the sports centre to go for a swim.
I love that we always get there too late to find a seat and have to sit cross-legged on the floor, half-scared, half-thrilled that this might be the bout where we get ploughed into by an roller queen who's been shoved out of the pack by a stray elbow.
I love the pre-game lap that the teams do and how we cheer. I love their names. Grievous Bodily Charm, Debbie Does Malice, Grrim Rita. But most of all I love the thrill of the Roller Derby itself. Two teams of beautiful, fierce, powerful women racing around the track and shoving ten shades of hell out of each other, as they tried to block the other teams' Jammer from breaking free of the pack.
There's something so exhilarating and inspiring about watching people do something that makes them happy and I wanted me a piece of that even though I am the very dictionary definition of klutz and I've been known to cry after a particularly serious paper cut.
But I forgot all about my spectacular lack of Roller Derby-worthy traits when I was head-hunted by two members of the Violent Femmes at a karaoke night to send an all star team of London roller girls to New York. Though when I say I was head-hunted what I really mean is that I performed a really shouty version of Poker Face (which on reflection was probably not the best choice of song because a) if I could play poker I would lose all my money and my worldly goods and chattels and the rather fetching crimplene shirt I currently have on my back, because I have the worst poker face ever and b) it was pitched far too high for me and when I strained for the top notes The Boy said I sounded like a cat whose throat had just been cut.
God, where was I? Roller Derby. After party. Karaoke. Ah yes, it's all coming back to me now. So I get bookended by Femme Fatal and Helen Highwater and they look me up and down and back to front and then
"Jeane," they say.
"Ever thought of trying out for Roller Derby?" they also say.
"You've got the right build to be a jammer and a blocker," they finally say and I'm all like, "Hell, yeah! Where do I sign up?"
In hindsight I should have maybe tried to like, y'know, actually practise skating in the two weeks I had before Roller Derby try-outs, but between finding a pair of skates on Freecycle and customising them by painstakingly painting a gingham pattern on them, deciding on my Roller Derby outfit; frilly knickers worn over orange fishnets worn over pink opaque tights and my lucky Lucky Charms t-shirt. And of course I had to come up with a totally kick your ass Roller Derby name.
So the newly christened Loco Chanel reported for duty at a sports centre in Tottenham along with fifteen other Roller wannabes.
It started off with a tutorial about the rules of Roller Derby but I already knew that and I was having so much fun scoping out everyone's ensembles and chatting with my fifteen new friends to pay much attention. That’s the old Roller Derby magic – it's such a welcoming, girl-friendly place and I was coasting along on this little wave of good cheer and good times until it was suddenly the moment when we had to strap on our skates.
Can I just say that if you get a pair of skates, it's probably worth trying them on ahead of a Roller Derby try-out. That way you'll know that the left skate is too big for your left foot, which is an ornery foot that insists on being half a size smaller than your right foot. You'll also realise that two pairs of tights don't really provide the necessary amount of padding and most important of all, you'll realise that you can't actually stand upright in your skates.
To be fair, that wasn't the skates' fault. It was my fault for forgetting that I can't even walk along a street without falling over and that each time I've been ice-skating, I've spent all my time clinging to the side instead of actually skating because whoever thought it was a good idea for a human being to balance on two blades while traversing a very slippery surface? A damn fool, that's who!
Turned out that everyone else had been skating before they could even walk or had spent the two weeks before tryouts, valiantly strapping on their skates at every available opportunity and practising. Everyone except me.
I'd gingerly lever myself out of my chair, take one nanosecond to appreciate that I was actually standing on a pair of rollerskates and then they'd slide out from under me and I'd have to start windmilling my arms, which did precisely no good, before I crashed to the floor.
The Roller Derby professionals were super-sweet about it. They praised me for not being a whiny crybaby every time I fell over and for attempting to get up each time, but these were small crumbs of comfort.
In the end, the only way I managed to get on to the track and skate around it was with two Roller Derby nursemaids taking an arm apiece and wheeling me around it. They did try to let go and I know everyone thought it would be this magical moment like when a kid is learning to ride a bike without stabilisers and his dad's pushing him and the kid's screaming, "Don't let go! Don't let go!" But the dad has to let go and the kid is riding his bike solo and it's, like, a metaphor for the kid growing up and leaving his baby years and his parents behind him as he cycles into the sunset of his future. Yeah, everyone thought it was going to be like that, but it wasn't, I just fell over again and again and again and, well, you get the picture.
All I could do was let myself be pushed over to the nearest chair and watch as everyone else who wasn't a total spaz on wheels got to learn the finer points of blocking and jamming. I was feeling very sorry for myself, but as I watched the others freewheeling around the track at great speed with big toothy grins as they all began to realise, 'Hey, I can do this and I might actually be good at it,' I forgot to feel sorry for myself because I was so proud of them. Proud and privileged to see these Roller Derby babies skating off into the sunset of their future.
And me? I got some wicked bruises, which will get me the sympathy vote (cupcakes and puppies to the usual address) for weeks.
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