How To Traumatise A Shell

It's my sister-in-laws wedding on Saturday.  This is a good thing, obviously.  She is marrying a man who likes dragons and dogs and who can cope with her family's obsession with cheese (we had a tower of cheese wheels at our wedding; my husband's dad still talks about it.  It think he may have forgotten the rest of the wedding, in all honesty.  It has become the Day of the Cheese.)  Anyway, the soon-to-be-husband of my sister-in-law is a lovely bloke and I am very happy for them.

I am less happy about the need to buy a wedding outfit.

I don't like wedding outfits.  The last time I bought a dress was for my own wedding and that was nearly five years ago (give or take a week - cards have started arriving wishing us a happy anniversary, which is normally how I tell it is about this time of year).  The last time I wore a dress was the wedding dress.  I think I have only worn a skirt five times since then.  My Year 13 class commented on it and got me to spin around to show them how it moved.  It was quite a nice skirt, actually.  Wonder what happened to it.

Normally, though, I live in walking trousers, jeans, work trousers and so on.  And dressing gowns.  We should be allowed to wear those out and about it normal life.  They are so much more comfortable, and I have a lovely hot-pink one.  I am sure hot-pink is fashionable.

But now, I have to wear actual out-of-the-house clothes for a wedding, so fine.  Except we are a few days away and had kind of, maybe, just a bit got caught up in archery.  So we had an hour tonight to get to the shops.

The suit for J was easy.  We were only in the shop for two minutes a little guy who reminded me of the Glory-worshiping lizard in Buffy turned up and pointed out an offer which included a full suit, tie, shirt and shoes.  Excellent.  Done and dusted in thirty minutes.  And a very nice suit it is, too.

Then I had to persuade myself to try on something other than T-shirts.  Hardly any of those dresses they sell in pretty-girl shops have dragons on.  Did you know that?  In fact, I could not find a single one.  It's a scandal.

Eventually, I asked the assistant if a pinkish dress I had found would make me look stupid.  Possibly not how I was meant to ask for help, but it was the best I could do.  She helped me find a slightly more solid pink with embroidery on it and a shoulder-jacket-thing.  It had a proper name.  I can't remember it.  I shall hereby refer to it as Fred.

The pink dress and Fred looked all right.  J said they looked very nice.  The assistant kept telling me what a good outfit it was, even when I had said I would buy it.  Overselling.  Once I have accepted I am going to buy a dress, it is really just better not to make me dwell on it.

She made me try on shoes, as well.  With heels.  I felt like a T-Rex, wobble-stomping round the shop.  A T-Rex in a pretty pink dress with a bow.  Jurassic Park would have been a different film if I had been allowed into wardrobe.

The shows were the wrong colour.  Apparently, you aren't allowed to wear turquoise shoes with a pink dress.  Or something.  Shoes still need to be bought.  Or, if it comes to it, I suppose I could always do what I ended up doing at my own wedding.  I could just abandon the restrictive concept of shoes and go bare-foot.

That has exhausted my ability to cope with dresses, shop-assistants and the outside world, so I am now huddled on the settee, in jogging pants and a Skyrim T-shirt, with my laptop showing about twenty tabs and a chinese take-a-way ordered.  This is much more like it.

Oh, God.  I just remembered that on Saturday I might have to find my make-up.  I'm pretty sure we brought it with us when we moved last year.

Gold! (Some of the time)

After another week of archery, I have finished the beginner's course and am now able to go along and work on shooting at the same time as the other members of the club.

I am pretty sure the beginner's course was mainly to check we are safe to be around bows and arrows, as it is very clear I have a long way to go.  Frankly, given how hard I find it to go somewhere I don't feel is mine, or to speak to new people, I feel I have succeeded simply by turning up to the club three times since the course finished last Sunday.

On Friday, we went along and ended up getting advice from the main coach at the club.  We did not realise it would just be him and us there, but it was fantastic.  He started off by saying he would train us 'as though we wanted to be Olympic champions in five years' (not sure which Olympics that will be - a winter one?), and we could tell him if we didn't want to worry about improving and would rather just shoot for fun.

He then broke down the way we were holding the bow and raising it to draw, including how to pull back with the back muscles rather than the ones in the arm.  That is all we worked on.  It made a real difference.  We spent two hours essentially getting private tuition.  For 50p each.  Bargain.

I love breaking things down and working on them before building them back up.  As the only thing which comes naturally to me is the written word, and I still love breaking that down, I also need such assistance with anything remotely sporty.  Karate was a case of learning which muscles to move and where to position myself, just to stay upright.  I managed it to the point where one of my Uni flatmates was convinced I had excellent natural balance.  How I laughed.  I can fall over on the flat surface.

With archery, I am just beginning to see how many little things there may be to alter.  By 'see', I mean I have a sense of a giant pit opening before me, down which I must tumble.  At the moment, I am standing on the edge.  I think it is going to be a case of inching slowly down the slope rather than jumping in, so now I just need to keep working on making a few inches of progress at a time.

I did get above 252 on the nearest target today, which is significantly higher than I managed last time.  Hell, two weeks ago I was barely getting 100.  252 is the number you have to get to earn a badge on that target, so I am quietly pleased.

Next time, we will go up to the next target, at a whole 30 feet away.  This is excellent news.  It means I will have a whole extra 10 feet of range when the Zombie apocalypse happens.

Getting Somewhere...Probably.

I am very much a beginner at this archery lark, but so far I have managed a larger bruise from this than I often did at karate.  There was that one time I couldn't get out of bed the day after a competition, because it turns out you need to be able to move your collarbone to roll off your back, and Anna Parkin had hit me repeatedly in the same place the day before, but that was years ago and as such didn't happen.

The bruise I have developed after holding my arm incorrectly at archery is in the present, so it is worse and bigger and more livid and so on.  I quite like the colour.  

If nothing else, it makes me feel I have made progress.  (Thanks to my sensei for making me feel bruises and pain  = success)  No matter.  I have a nice shiny bruise now, so I can assure myself I have had a decent go at archery.  Quiet down there, people who have done much archery and know this makes no sense.  Sense is not something I currently care about.  This is about experiencing things.

Look at the bruise.

As well as a bruise, I now have a rented bow and arrows at home.  Doesn't it look pretty?  I feel like Hawkeye.  Without the outfit or the superhuman ability.  Quite by accident, I got a red bow and pink arrows.  As I missed the whole pink obsession as a kid, I am making up for it now.

I think I even managed to set up my bow properly this evening (nothing looked upside down, in any case).  Hey, and as a bonus, there is proof that I sort of mowed the lawn.  

Having the equipment is making me feel like I am getting somewhere.  As is the fact that partway through yesterday's session, they finally told me to shut one eye and, after the bruise, to turn my arm.  These two together meant I shifted from missing the target half the time to hitting the much smaller target they put up (we'll worry about hitting the gold another time; one thing at a time).

All in all, it is refreshing to be starting with something new.  It helps me to think about breaking things down and not needing to worry about being good enough.  I'm a beginner.  I passed my introductory certificate.  I'm good enough for now.

Keeping On

Recently, I have tried out a few new activities.  Nothing major; I have not scaled Everest (though I do intend to have another crack at Helvellyn over the summer) or swum the channel (though I did get to point out to a colleague that 'swum' is the correct form of the verb, thank-you very much, in a totally unconnected conversation).  Perhaps I will build up to something larger, or perhaps I won't.  Swimming the channel seems a little steep as far as my current goals go.

Instead, I made an axe.  It was an activity at a bush-craft fair (another new experience) and involved five hours of sledgehammers and heat.  Lots of heat.  Little old ladies kept wandering past the furnace, which was just wonderful, what with the sparks and hot metal, and I had to move a lot faster than I was comfortable with in order to get the metal to the anvil in time to hit it.  The vibrations from the sledge-hammer left my hands in such a cramped, stiffened state that I couldn't turn the car-key one-handed for a week.  It turns out those opposable thumbs really come in handy in many situations, and suddenly I had lost the use of mine for anything which required gripping.

It was worth it, though.

Making something I had never attempted to make before was fascinating.  I learnt I am good at swinging a sledge-hammer, so if I ever feel the need to pound in fence-posts, I should be fine.  Basking in the glow of accomplishment felt good.

For about two days.

After that, I started thinking I was wasting my time, not taking things any further.  Not that smithing was something I had in mind, but I should be achieving something, surely.

Next, I have joined an archery club.  In just a couple of weeks, I already have a whole load of new terms to use and tips to think over.  Unlike the axe-making, this is something I can keep doing, as long as I buy a bow and join the various associations.  So far, it is engaging and satisfying.  I am not always hitting the target, but I am getting better at being consistent, and at knowing what I have done which needs correctly, so yay me!

Yesterday, I watched some of the archery world championships.  Now I feel like I need to learn to hit gold every time or else quit.

This is something I do a lot.  I do it at work, with my writing, with painting...with everything, really.  That 'it's perfect or it's a failure' thing kicks in.  After years of this damaging my enjoyment and involvement in hobbies and activities, I am really trying just to go with the task before me and take it for what it is, without projecting ahead.  I am not going to be in the archery world cup.  I don't even want to be in the archery world cup.  I am going to turn up, shoot some arrows, try to let the bow fall forwards as the arrow is released, and enjoy it.  That's it.

It is not a philosophy I am having as much luck attaching to my writing.  Taking it a bit at a time is fine, but I am at the stage in my WIP where I am starting to think about sending it out.  Not yet.  It still needs work.  But soon.  I am assailed by doubt that it is ready for its world cup, and that is stopping me from getting on and making it as good as I can.

I suppose I am just going to have to try and keep aiming at the individual targets (finish this chapter, finish this draft, revise this draft...) instead of rushing my mind's-eye ahead to the potential end, but it is hard to do.  I really want to hit that gold.

First Post

I give in.  If we are all creating blogs, then I will create a blog, too.  In fact, I will throw myself with abandon into the blogging fire.

Who will come and burn with me?