We went to Tom’s work christmas party last night, which was held at Cork’s first ever ice skating rink – Fota on Ice! I’m sure the person who dreamed up this idea had a really lovely image in their minds of a marquis tent and a little cafe off to the side, with bouncy castles and a santa for the kids. The email we got with the ‘menu’ and ‘schedule of events’ certainly conjured up images of lovely dinners and relaxed skating afterwards. It’s no wonder we all stood around when we first got there, thinking “surely we are supposed to be somewhere else!” The marquis was there, and there was a meal and skating, but the elegance had gotten sidetracked somewhere along the way along with the vegetarian option and the mulled wine.

It was a good night nonetheless, watching adults who have never seen this much ice at once learn to skate. As Tom’s supervisor, Chris, said – “It’s amazing to see that people were actually getting better by the end of the session.” and they were. Despite the numerous hard falls taken by the crowd at large, everybody kept going and the smiles and raccous laughter never subsided. It might have been the deafening christmas music, actually. It seemed to cause some sort of delerium.

Afterwards, we walked most of the way home with one of Tom’s workmates who is from Siberia. He kept saying, “I do not understand why the Soviets did not make skating in my hometown. It costs nothing!” He had never been skating before, and by the end he was flying around the rink like a swooping bird – arms outstretched and ducking quickly in and out of the crowd.

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