What this is all about.

Here it is, the awkward first blog post. I guess I should explain what this is all going to be about.

I am Claudia, and over the last six weeks I have started to become a bad-ass roller derby girl. By which I mean, "I've been learning basic skating from actual bad-ass derby girls with hopes of one day bouting myself. Or just being able to skate and stop without falling over."

I was incredibly lucky to be able to join a team, if not at its conception, at its birth, having attended the inaugural practice of the Milton Keynes Concrete Cows, along with (I think) six other aspiring cows of various skating experience. Since then, our herd has grown to over 20 under the watchful eye of Beltane 'Bel'' Wytch, and latterly Munchin Mong, both skaters from Bedfordshire Roller Girls, and Sandra, who teaches figure skating and gives excellent instruction on improving our skating. Under their leadership, we are starting to look more and more like actual derby girls and are growing into our superhero alter-ego nicknames.

We are becoming derby girls in other ways too. You think 'roller derby', you think 'bruises' (or you think, 'what's roller derby?'. Don't worry, I'm coming to that.). We, the Concrete Cows, have already begun to collect our injuries like Pogs (Remember Pogs? Never mind.). Ninja Myrtle managed an epic bruise the first time she -briefly - stood up in skates, that radiated from the base of her spine (ok, her arse) in beautiful hues of scarlet, yellow and green; I muffed up a baseball slide to pull all the muscles around my left shoulder and repeatedly strain my thumb perfoming what I like to call "wall stops", in lieu of actual skilled stopping methods; The Duchess has almost certainly done something horrific to her coccyx but refuses to see a doctor (Dude! See a doctor!). Betty Knox, whether because of her diminutive height or her experience as a cop, seems to have infinitely more resistance to falls, and as a result HAS NO FEAR.

We have all mastered knee falls, double knee falls ("DOUBLES!"), and four point falls. We can skate in a pace line, and in a pack, and can weave through, giving and receiving hip and arm whips. Some of us are learning baseball slides, plough stops, derby stops, stopper starts and crossovers. Few of us can do T-stops, however, and those who can glide to graceful halts while the rest of us look on with envy. We are developing a uniform that hinges on wearing black and white, with cowprint 'accents', as I heard them described recently. Essentially, hand painted t-shirts, and anything else we can find. We even have cow print over-knee socks en route from Australia.

It's all coming together. We skate together, we attend weekly roller discos together, we geek out over derby YouTube videos and websites together and, after each practice's inevitable "Pub?" "YEAH!" exchange, we drink together. At a pub in Heelands (well, something's gotta give!). It's a real challenge, a real laugh, and we're all just at the beginning. I reckon this cow's got legs (with skates on).

On this blog, I will regularly - or, more likely, sporadically - document our progress as a team and my progress as a skater. I'll include skater profiles of the other girls on the team, and maybe let them write guest posts, as long as they promise not to use my blog as a platform for their own world domination agendas. Hopefully it will be informative and, if not hilarious, at least distracting enough to allow you to procrastinate instead of doing that thing you should be doing. You know what it is.