Skipping

No, not the one with a rope - an activity shared (uniquely?) by boxers and pre-pubescent girls.

The skipping that lies somewhere between walking and running, and which I doubt I've done in over 25 years, (35 years if you don't count post-ironic, drunken, nostalgia-frenzy).

The church was having a service for the local primary schools this morning (harvest festival?), and whilst walking for the paper, I followed a number of mothers doing their best to make their kids get a move on. In trying to keep up, at least three of the kids skipped for a few paces.

This seems quite natural to them, and yet I was struggling in my own head to remember how to do it exactly. I'm not sure my body actually knows how to start any more. Which seems sad, because not only do I have vague and distant memories of it coming naturally, I also remember it as an expression of uncontrollable giddiness. (Bobby has a similar "funny five minutes" back-wheel spin thing that he does when overcome with excitement, which has always been a delight - excepting when he did it up and down the village hall at his first obedience class.)

No doubt somewhere down the line I was made to realise that skipping was childish, or girlish, or both, and by such constraints do we all proceed to look through the glass darkly.

So, I fully intend to have a go today. When I'm well away from any remote chance of being spotted obviously. Anne, if I'm not home later I'll be behind the sewage works somewhere, with a broken ankle...