Roller Derby sans Barbecue Forks

I went to the roller derby on Saturday night. I wasn't really sure what to expect. I had some vague notion of heavily armoured myrmidons flailing at each other with barbecue forks while the air is filled with roller skates and eviscerated livers. Sadly I have to report that all livers remained more or less in place and there wasn't a barbecue fork in sight. The bouts were pretty exciting despite this.

Before we could experience the skates of doom there were a number of traditional preliminaries to be observed whenever a group of young people (not me idiot, the others) go out. There were pre game drinks, random comings and goings, more drinks, the obligatory leaving of the tickets with the least reliable person available, dinner (thanks Natasha), more drinks and then frantic attempts to herd everybody out the door.

In all there were eight of us and a quick roll call seems in order. There was Morganne who had spent the day not rock climbing and had come back with a couple of friends. There was Lindsay one of the aforementioned friends a pretty and likeable if somewhat dehydrated young lady. There was a social worker with an egg fetish. There was Natasha a flatmate of Morganne's who raised herself high in my estimation by cooking us all lasagna. There was David another flatmate who didn't cook anything and therefore isn't as high in my estimation as Natasha but was nice nonetheless. David had brought a lesbian date (howls of outrage from the traditional, ie female, lesbians) who was short, very attractive and well aware of that fact. Finally there was Rae, Rae was quiet, unobtrusive, always ready to go whenever one of the more hysterical of us howled that we were going to be late and is possibly the only one of us who actually saw an entire bout. Oh yes and there was me tagging along behind in my usual state of easygoing bewilderment.

Eventually with much shouting and threats of abandonment everybody lurched out of the house and made our way down to the railway station. It has to be said that public transport came up trumps, providing us with trains and buses to order and getting us to the Hordern Pavillion in very short order. Along the way a vigorous debate was held about whether transsexuals can have orgasms. At least I think that's what it was about, I didn't have much to contribute. I'm not sure what conclusion was drawn but if the answer is "no" then there was one transsexual of my (all too brief) acquaintance who was damned good at faking it. I think I was meant to be shocked by this conversation as if words like cum, fuck, clitoris and surgery had only just been invented. One of the charming things about the young is that they firmly believe human history began thirty seconds before they were born whereas in actual fact it began thirty seconds before I was born. Human history used to start a lot earlier, around 1943 I think, but that was before the maniacs at the Hadron Supercollider started molesting bosons. Nowadays we're just lucky if Tuesday follows Thursday. I mean Wednesday.

The last time I was at the Hordern Pavillion was for a Nine Inch Nails concert and the place hasn't changed appreciably. Incidentally my cursor seems to have vanished which is making it difficult to keep up with myself. Once inside the security barrier the sense of cohesion we had fell apart and from that time on until the end of the night I don't think we were all in the one place. I met a neighbour and we greeted each other with that sort strained bonhomie that intensely masculine men such as ourselves affect when we run into somebody at a women's sporting event that we didn't expect to see. The thirty seconds this took was all the time I needed to lose such of my companions as hadn't wandered off. Eventually I found a couple of them and we went inside to watch the bout. At least I watched the bout, the social worker decided to stave off boredom by removing another of my companions skull and peeling back her brain layer by layer. At half time we wandered outside again and found several of my other companions who had miraculously found seats.

By this point gentle reader you are no doubt thinking something along the lines of "In the name of God will you just shut up with the babbling on and tell us about the roller derby". I acknowledge my flaws and I crave pardon. The roller derby was excellent. These girls play hard, whizzing around the oval while at the same time attempting to kill each other without attracting the ire of the referees. There was skill, there was grace, there was speed and there was violence. There isn't much more you can ask for from a sport than that. I had a thoroughly good time and by the end I was applauding and murmuring approvingly as if I understood what was going on.

I hope Morganne can get me a ticket for the next bout.