A GCSE in skateboarding? I can get on board with that| Emylia Hall

A GCSE in skateboarding? I can get on board with that| Emylia Hall

By mastering the not-so-simple art of standing sideways, you also learn tenacity and mindfulness

It’s January 2022 and my seven-year-old son is standing on his skateboard at the top of a concrete ramp that’s known in these parts as a “funbox”. Right now, it doesn’t seem so fun. I can feel the fear vibrating from him. I’m urging him to give it a go. Pleading, almost. The reason for my fervour? Only a few weeks earlier I’d stood, frozen, in that exact spot, before taking my own plunge. And I know how amazing he’ll feel afterwards. So, we take baby steps. First, we hold hands as he rolls down. Then we hold fingers. Then fingertips. Then, finally, he does it all on his own. As he makes it, the smile on his face lights up the entire skatepark.

There’s a strange alchemy to skateboarding: in a flash, terror turns into delight. My husband and I began skating three years ago, when we were 42 and 44 respectively, so that we could learn alongside our son. As a “later skater”, what I’ve come to realise is that everything seems impossible until you try it. Every minuscule achievement, every incremental progression, feels epic, and each experience hard-won. There’s a lesson in that. And apparently the establishment agrees: for the first time, skateboarding – for so long seen as a fringe pursuit, wild, rebellious, high in the misspent-youth pecking order – has been approved as a GCSE component in Wales and Northern Ireland.

Emylia Hall is the author of the The Shell House Detectives mystery series. Her latest book is The Rockpool Murder

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