Downhill from the 2nd tee
Monday, November 14, 2005
Packaged with of one of my magazine subscriptions this week was one of those brochures advertising page after page of obscure items I never knew existed and certainly never coveted until presented with them in glorious colour and purple prose. Laura especially loves these little booklets. Perhaps I should buy her a subscription to some clearing house for these sorts of brochure. Do you think they occasionally package up a New Statesman or LRB when sending them out?
Anyway, among the limited editions in this most recent brochure was a racing sledge with brakes and steering. You sit rather than lie on it and it looked a lot of fun. Expensive, though. The sight of this sledge brough home the fact that my children have never done much sledging. There just never seems to be enough snow where we live now. When I was a child I remember the Christmas holidays as being a time for dragging my sledge along the streets up to the golf course where I was a junior member and spending hours careening down the precipitous slope from the second green towards the wall that separated the ninth and second fairways.
In 1964 I remember going sledging with my friend and neighbour Bruce Guthrie the morning after Nash and Dixon won the two-man boblseigh gold medal for Britain at the Winter Olympics. We started off being Nash and Dixon as we hurtled down the slopes, probably quarrelling over who was Nash and who was Dixon, without really knowing the one from the other or really caring - but that's a boy thing - and then we progressed to telling the other children gathered to sledge that we were their sons. It probably made sense in some parallel universe.
I loved pushing myself over the lip of the second green and heading rapidly towards the wall. The trick was to dig your right foot into the snow behind you as close as possible to the bottom so that you swung away from the wall at the last moment. If it looked like you'd left it too late then you had to simply roll off the sledge and dive into the snow. Then there was the treck back up the slope to the start as quickly as possible.
My children are all older than I was then when I dragged my sledge the twenty minute walk to the golf course. We have course around here that, if it ever snowed enough, might offer similar adventures, but I would never allow my children to make that walk alone today. That is sad.
Anyway, among the limited editions in this most recent brochure was a racing sledge with brakes and steering. You sit rather than lie on it and it looked a lot of fun. Expensive, though. The sight of this sledge brough home the fact that my children have never done much sledging. There just never seems to be enough snow where we live now. When I was a child I remember the Christmas holidays as being a time for dragging my sledge along the streets up to the golf course where I was a junior member and spending hours careening down the precipitous slope from the second green towards the wall that separated the ninth and second fairways.
In 1964 I remember going sledging with my friend and neighbour Bruce Guthrie the morning after Nash and Dixon won the two-man boblseigh gold medal for Britain at the Winter Olympics. We started off being Nash and Dixon as we hurtled down the slopes, probably quarrelling over who was Nash and who was Dixon, without really knowing the one from the other or really caring - but that's a boy thing - and then we progressed to telling the other children gathered to sledge that we were their sons. It probably made sense in some parallel universe.
I loved pushing myself over the lip of the second green and heading rapidly towards the wall. The trick was to dig your right foot into the snow behind you as close as possible to the bottom so that you swung away from the wall at the last moment. If it looked like you'd left it too late then you had to simply roll off the sledge and dive into the snow. Then there was the treck back up the slope to the start as quickly as possible.
My children are all older than I was then when I dragged my sledge the twenty minute walk to the golf course. We have course around here that, if it ever snowed enough, might offer similar adventures, but I would never allow my children to make that walk alone today. That is sad.
