Category: Ice skating

In an unbelievable turn of events, children all over Australia are begging their parents for ice skating lessons. The huge rise in demand for ice skating tuition follows the major increase in exposure to competitive ice hockey. The United States of America, along with Canada, Russia and all major ice hockey destinations started a mass export of the sport in 2010. Australian television sets have been beaming ice hockey games to viewers at a rapidly increasing rate over the last six years, with figures peaking earlier this year. Children across the nation are begging their parents for ice skating lessons, Melbourne in particular, has been hit hard.

Industry insiders have called the ongoing obsession with ice skating an epidemic. One family in North Melbourne have reported their children are so fixated by all things ice that they have constructed an igloo in their garden and refuse to leave. Mrs. Jones spoke to us directly and said “I thought the igloo would melt when the sun came out and they would have to return inside but they were one step ahead, re-freezable ice blocks”. Sports stores across Melbourne have experienced record breaking sales of ice skates and ice hockey jerseys. Ice skating lessons are at an all time high with waiting times reaching over two months for a one on one session.

As well as the unprecedented increase in demand for ice skating lessons, ice rinks have also proved to be an extremely popular choice for kids birthday party venues. From toddlers right up to teens, parents are being hounded by their offspring to book ice skating parties. The parties are such a success that ice rinks have had to take on extra support staff to help remove children from the ice rinks at the end of the allocated session.
There has been a mass shutdown of alternative birthday party venues as there is no demand for anything other than ice skating. Multiple venues have released plans to transition into ice rinks and plans for current ice rinks to expand are being considered by city planners. For in depth coverage of the ice epidemic, please stay tuned.

So I may have made a seemingly minor mistake a short while ago that is now coming back to bite me on the behind. When my son was falling asleep the other night I was telling him a ‘bedtime story’. I’ve put that in quotations because, after reading him the actual story from start to finish, he wanted me to keep going so I just started making things up. Nonsense mainly. This is a pretty standard practice in our household and I usually don’t think anything of it, except that he latched onto one, relatively minor detail, when I thought he was pretty much asleep and now he’s become kind of obsessed with it.

From what I remember (hey, I was tired too) I may have told him penguins lived in Melbourne ice skating rinks. On the scale of story telling to lying, I feel like it’s pretty obvious where that tale stands, but unfortunately it’s not so clear for Tim. When he woke up in the morning I was totally unprepared for the excitement surrounding going ice skating. Usually when he wakes up he doesn’t remember the stories at all! Why did this one have to be different?

All of this is magnified tenfold by the unhelpful fact that we promised him he could have his birthday party anywhere and now he’s desperate to go ice skating. Have you ever tried organising birthday party venues last minute? It’s pretty much impossible. Everywhere requires a certain amount of notice that we didn’t give. In fact, since the offer for Tim to have his party anywhere has been open for months, we’d just assumed we were going to have it here. I’d even started organising all the decorations and everything like that. This has just gone and thrown a huge spanner in the works. It’s okay though. Finding an ice skating rink that’s still available is going to be way easier than convincing Tim penguins don’t live there.