No we’re not about to start talking about that slot on BBC One’s Saturday Morning Kitchen when a celebrity is brought in and tells us which sorbet they love, which they hate, and you get to phone in and decide which it is they have to eat. Rather, this is a time of year when some will fall on black ice and break a few bones. Others will be brave and go on the ice out of choice. Every year around this time, towns and cities up and down the country will be opening up temporary open-air ice rinks to tempt families into the urban centres and hopefully spend a bit on shopping while they’re there. The young and the old, the tall and the small, will be out there doing the conga with a pair of metal blades attached to their feet. Such courage! But if that requires balance, coordination and an overcoming of fear, spare a thought for our figure skating forebears. There remains a whole generation in Britain who can only think of one thing whenever they hear Ravel’s Bolero – Torvill and Dean. Time flies and it’s hard to believe that it’s nearly 30 years since our national figure-skating heroes glided to glory at the 1984 Winter Olympics. You can’t imagine either of these ice heroes being fazed by slippery winter conditions outside. Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean became the highest scoring figure skaters of all time and are both from Nottingham. They even joined the city’s equivalent of the Hall of Fame alongside the Robin Hood and his Merry Men. For alongside road names like Maid Marion Way are now to be found Torvill Drive and Dean Close. A fitting tribute to our sporting winners, but did they get good at their art by sliding to work along the slippery pavements of the East Midlands? Perhaps every snow cloud has a silver lining? A slippery problem this winter?
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figure skating, ice, slippery, winter, nottingham,
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