Bowled Over....

Today was a bit shit. Last session with students. I made them scones. Say no more...

The weekend was pretty fab though! As well as going to the pictures (Stranger Than Fiction - recommended) and an evening stroll around the atmospheric German Market on Princes Street,Theo arranged for me to do something I'd never done before: we went bowling.

It might seem odd to some that I have never been bowling. Certainly, I have been to a bowling alley: in Coventry I once supervised a Year Seven outing *shudders at the memory* but due to being very professional (and afraid of being humiliated by a mess of 11 year olds) I refrained from bowling itself. There's even a family history of bowling - my mother was apparently an OK bowler - my sister's dad even had his own personalised bowling ball (there's something vaguely worrying about that, but I can't quite put my finger on it...) but I had never succumbed.

I was, I will admit, quietly excited by going bowling. Part of me felt as though a part of my childhood, or adolescence at the very least, was missing having never been bowling. The hideous cacophony of the bowling alley is strangely atmospheric: loud music, the rumble and clatter of the balls as they hurtle down the alley and crash into the pins, the chatter and buzz of meaningless conversations, the clink of glasses. It might seem commonplace, but it is nonetheless exciting. What made it even more exciting was being taken there as a date!

Luckily, Theo and I aren't competitive with each other - lucky for me certainly, as my bowling was as woeful as one would expect from a first time bowler - which made things even more fun. She tried to assist me with my bowling technique and I contented myself watching the way she shimmied as she let loose her cannoning shots. We also played air hockey and pool - and Theo even won things from the grabby thing (you know, the ones that stroke the toy you want before returning mechanically to their corner to mock one's ridiculous hope). I may have been a little mischievous in snatching the odd kiss here and there - and in front of heterosexuals, too *tut* - but it all added to the "replaying by re-gaying adolescence" experience. Sometimes its good to feel like a teenager!

As a consequence of our bowling trip, we did wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, we should organise a dykey bowling trip - something that might enhance the woeful lesbian scene in Edinburgh (where the choice would appear to be either the usual drinking and dancing, or bookgroups and football/basketball/cricket for a less sceney activity- all of which which are fine, if somewhat lacking in good old-fashioned fun...) - and give us a "grown-up" excuse to go bowling again, of course.