Leithal Weapons vs Cherry Bombers

Hi Edinburgh people! What are you doing on Saturday? (yes, this Saturday!). How about some fast-skating, hard-hitting, home season roller derby?

 

Auld Reekie Roller Girls launch their home season with the might of the Leithal Weapons vs the Cherry Bombers on January 21st at Meadowbank Sports Centre.

Tickets are £6 in advance (£7 on the door) OR you can buy a season ticket for only £20 which will get you into all four home bouts!

I am just alarmed at how much I might end up spending on merch... eek (sorry future house fund).

Live roller derby!

This is SO EXCITING.

 

On October 29th  ARRG's two travel teams, the Twisted Thistles and Cannon Belles, are playing EACH OTHER in a special late night bout at Meadowbank. 

I'm really excited about this. Really really excited. There will be about a million of my friends on roller skates! & I'll be happy whoever wins! Although I guess that creates the dilemma... who to cheer for? Everyone? (I'll lose my voice!). Eeeep. Tickets are only £5 and it's our last home bout before the home season starts in January. If you are in Edinburgh please come along and see why derby is wonderful!

On that note, I've been trying to find a bout to go to when we are in Florida (next week...!) and thought I had found a winner with the Tampa Bay Derby Darlins, only to discover that it's the same night that we are going to see New Found Glory. Damn you pop punk! The only other bout I can find in the two weeks we are there is over three hours away, which is just a bit too far. If you know of anything that I might have missed, please tell me!

Happy thoughts

This week has been so lovely! Bank holiday days off, lots of chilling, a wee spot of shopping and catching up on much needed sleep. Ahh. Here's some of the things that have made it nice.

1. Auld Reekie Roller Girls

 

SO many exciting things are happening for ARRG! If you head over to WFTDA (Women's Flat Track Derby Association) you'll see that ARRG are now an official member league! So exciting. This is something that ARRG have worked really hard for (as a newer member I haven't contributed at all, but at least I can join the celebrations and be proud!). We're the second European league, after the mighty London Roller Girls, to join so this is a big deal.

Not only that, but we have home teams for the first time, with the home season kicking off next January!

AND I'll be returning to skating on Sunday! I'm very happy about this, with a healthy dose of being a bit terrified as I haven't skated in eight weeks. I'm hoping it all comes flooding back.

2. Charity shop finds

So happy to get this book! The Crimson Petal and the White is one of my favourite books, and I've wanted to pick this up for ages (but have always been a bit too skint when I spotted it in book shops!). I saw Michel Faber talk at the book festival and I loved it, so this is very well timed. Ta, charity shop.

My friend Niki also picked up a spur of the moment well thought out smoking jacket. It's velvet and very sharp.

3. Being healthy!

My holiday is fast approaching  (32 days!) so I am really looking forward to eating loads of tasty, healthy food and getting back to derby training after the excess of August! Today's lunch is a salad from the Edinburgh Larder and it is really lovely.

Have a lovely weekend all. If you are in London then go to this!

I like blogs: Moo

My friend Moo (real name Rebecca, roller derby name Apocalypse Cow) writes (and draws!) one of the funniest blogs I follow - Death by Garage Door. She has been drawing loads of derby cartoons, which are sweet and lovely and funny (and true), and drew this for me!

It's so accurate. I DO like jumpers with horses on them. So sweet (ta Moo!).

Moo is also skating THIS SATURDAY when Auld Reekie Roller Girls take on Glasgow Roller Girls in the first of our two fringe bouts! Tickets are still available here!

Roller derby at Edinburgh Fringe Festival!

This August Auld Reekie Roller Girls are putting on not one, but two Fringe bouts! First up, ARRG's Cannon Belles vs GRG's Maiden Grrders on August 6th. Last time these teams met GRG won, so COME ON ARRG!

Then ARRG's Twisted Thistles take on Stuttgart Valley Rollergirlz on August 20th. 

It's just the best sport ever. You get to shout and cheer and stamp your feet! Tickets are available here and are only FIVE POUNDS! Go go go, buy buy buy.

Roller derby helmet

Best roller derby helmet in the world? Maybe..

The detail is amazing! & yes, ARRG rules 

This was painted for me, by the very talented KillaWatts (who also skates for Auld Reekie Roller Girls). It's incredible!

Front of helmet

I hadn't been entirely sure what I wanted (she's been painting a few ARRG helmets lately, so I had been wracking my brain trying to think of something cool), but I eventually decided that I wanted a traditional tattoo style (purely so I could have swallows on it!) and this is the creation.

Miss Chief! That's me

It's amazing!

Investi-cat

I had a bit of a mad dash across town tonight after work to pick it up, then rushed off for a sneaky Monday night practice. I wanted to work on transitions as I am RUBBISH at them, so my lovely pal Stitches basically spun me around for 10 minutes, until I was confident enough doing it myself (at very slow speeds). I found it really tricky at first, but slowly I realised that if I stopped thinking about what my feet did, and instead just moved my body to the direction I wanted to travel, then my feet would go to the right place!

I'm still falling over when I try them with speed, but it's just a case of practice, practice, practice until it is drilled into my head! A really successful Monday by all accounts!

& for good measure, here's a photo of me, derbied up. Trying to do a tough derby face. & smiling politely instead. Hmm. (practice, practice, practice).

Thanks Watts, I love it!

Polka dot nails

Always amused that I freckle so much I get them on my fingers

Here's an incredibly easy thing to do if you have five minutes and want polka-dotty nails - just grab a spare kirby grip, open up the ends, dunk in nail varnish and dot on nails!

This was my very first attempt, so it is clearly a bit smudgy in some places and not very well mapped out in others, but hey! Next time I'll be a polka champion.

Busy, busy weekend ahead. Craig is back from a week-long surfing bootcamp tonight (hooray), then tomorrow we are going through to Peebles to see Frightened Rabbit play at Tweedlove. I am super excited about this as I'll see my wee pal Aimi (who I do not see hardly enough), but also I can pretend the festival is named after me! Good times.

Sunday is roller derby practice! I am excited, as I have been missing loads lately because of work/festival stuff/deadlines. So I will probably be horrifically knackered, but that's okay.

Have a lovely weekend everyone x

Auld Reekie vs London Roller Girls

Put the date in your diaries, pals! Auld Reekie Roller Girls vs LONDON!

In less than two weeks our superstar team, the Twisted Thistles, are going to take on the mighty Brawl Saints from London Roller Girls! This is a Big Deal, as it's the first WFTDA sanctioned bout to be played in Scotland.

I have been swithering for ages about going to this vs Rockness (sorry ARRG, I love you, but I've been wanting to go to Rockness for years), but my mind is made up. Roller derby won all the way.

So you should come too! Tickets can be bought on the door, or from this link.

Wedding cupcakes

Oh, hiya. I've had a lovely couple of weeks, but they have been RIDICULOUSLY busy. I work at a magazine so I don't always get public holidays off (all depending on publication schedules, etc) but luckily I got the royal wedding & yesterday off & was able to chill.

It wasn't all just lounging in the (pale, pathetic) Scottish sun though. I'd been asked to make wedding cupcakes, so my last week was spent preparing, making sample cakes, & then finally the real deal - baking and setting up 170 cupcakes.

It went well though. Tada!

I used my go-to recipe for cupcakes, which I will post (with a how to) later. It's the loveliest (& easiest!) recipe ever - it is a little dense for big cakes, but perfect for cupcakes and comes out a lovely golden brown. I used the same buttercream recipe I always use (500g icing sugar, 250g butter) because it is THE BEST and nothing I've tried beats it. This makes me sounds like such an obnoxious baker, sorry. It is good though.

I had planned to roll out the hearts individually, but cheated and bought some in bulk because they had lovely embossing (which I wouldn't have been able to do at home). See? Lovely.

I have also celebrated the royal wedding happily (so beautiful, so lovely, etc) and have PASSED MY ROLLER DERBY MINIMUMS! Which means that I can officially call myself an Auld Reekie Roller Girl, go to more practices and skate with all the skaters in our league (who are all so brilliant and a bit terrifying to keep up with just now, but I'm telling myself it'll get better).

Happy days indeed.

Roller derby love

Ahh, roller derby. How I love you so.

I'd been planning to write a intro to roller derby, but saw that my lovely friend (and fellow roller girl) Stitches had pipped me to the post & written a lovely, eloquent description, complete with video tutorial. Amazing. I highly recommend you check it out here - Stitches blog - otherwise, you might not have a clue what I'm talking about.

Roller derby is by FAR the hardest thing that I've ever done. Not only is it physically tough (& it is. It apparently burns over 2000 calories in a two hour session?!) but it requires so much mental strength to pick yourself up, brush yourself down and keep going.

I started WAY back in April 2010, going to a fresh meat session with the Auld Reekie Roller Girls after watching them bout on Valentine's day (this was after a drunken afternoon picnic, which probably explains why I felt brave enough to sign up!). At fresh meat, all strapped up (into safety gear) and ready to go, I found that I couldn't even stand up on skates. Even a few weeks later when I had my own I was extremely wobbly and nervous for the first 20 minutes of each session. But something kept making me come back, getting up early (by my standards, hah!) on a Sunday to trek to Niddry for practice, and fall over for two hours.

Not long after I started skating I also took part in the Moonwalk, and strained a tendon in my foot which meant I couldn't walk without a limp for two months (never mind skate), so when I returned I was back to the beginning, with a new group of people that I didn't know. A month after that, it was the Edinburgh Festival & life/work/friends took over my derby time. I went back in September, and was horrendously unfit, but made new friends, tried my minimums for the first time, failed, but kept going back. I had the worst attendance record ever, but I was still hooked.

Then, at the end of last year, Craig & I went on a mammoth four-week trip to New Zealand, so I missed even more practice & then when I was finally back in the UK in December, I lost my nerve. I dressed it up as being too busy over Christmas/being busy with my new job, but realistically I was scared. It had been too long since I had been skating, so I was remembering the scary bits & the tough bits, and not paying any attention to the parts that made it worthwhile - the lovely, lovely people & the wonderful feeling of getting a hit right, or increasing your speed - just skating.

So, with the help of my derby friends (who I'd been ignoring due to derby guilt/jealousy), I came back. And it was SO SCARY. But I remembered how to do everything. I was slower at first and not as strong, but I'm getting better. & yesterday I took part in my second set of minimums.. I don't know how I did yet, but it felt good. I am making progress.

It's hard keeping myself motivated sometimes, when I feel like I've been a fresh meat forever. But that's okay. Even if I don't pass this time, I will soon. I'm pushing myself more than I have before. That's good enough for me.

NOW. As you have read my gushing love for ARRG, you should probably come see them. Yes? It's on April 16th, at Meadowbank. You can buy tickets here.