Wind’s in the east, there’s a mist coming in,
Like something is brewing and about to begin…
Mary Poppins, 1964
On the ice, when I’m supposed to be perfecting backward chassés, is not the time to start reflecting. But I can’t help myself. I’m not as focused as I should be on my skating, which surely won’t end well. There’s about to be momentous change in my life and yet everything feels the same. Still got the Sunday Scaries about school tomorrow, still convinced I’ll be stuck in the level five skating class forever, still lamenting the combination of housework and planning that awaits once I’m back in my flat later.
Some things are too much the same. My skating coach has just asked me to demonstrate the next skill on the list (it’s assessment week) and I feel myself shrinking away despite the encouragement of my peers. On most of the level five skills, I am the most technically competent skater in my class. I know my fellow skaters (all of them at least ten years my senior, some old enough to be my parents) are not judging me for the fact I struggle with this one. I can’t get the mechanics of it straight in my head, a backwards outside edge to forwards inside edge (I realise that doesn’t mean anything to non-skaters, but stay with me!) It’s not a big deal that I can’t manage this first-time, that I need to be shown rather than be the one doing the showing.
And yet there it is, that familiar gut-wrenching panic that has never been far away throughout the last ten years. The only thing that has changed has been the background: an A-level French lesson, a sociology exam, a lecture theatre, various offices and seminar rooms, in my car on the M40, my empty classroom when I can finally let sensory overload take centre stage. It doesn’t feel different, no matter the cause or the name I give it. Anxiety, panic attack, autistic meltdown – in my head, they are all branches of the same tree.
A tree that has now taken root on the ice rink. Where I had previously been graceful and competent, I now feel stompy, ungainly and off-balance. My brain, momentarily, won’t even put one skate in front of the other.
Don’t get me wrong, I know it doesn’t matter. I know there are bigger issues in the world than my inability to be the centre of attention in a group of seven, for less than twenty seconds! (The irony of this is not lost on me, when it is literally my job to be the centre of attention in my classroom for six hours a day!) But as anyone who has experienced anxiety will tell you, it matters not whether the situation merits worrying about.
Suddenly, I am saved by another familiar. The unmistakable sound of an adult, in another class, hitting the ice with a thump. We turn as one, like a flock of wild birds observing a predator in the distance. We all know the feeling. We all just want to see the person get up again and be okay. They are. We carry on. It’s enough to snap me out of my own head and set me back straight again.
And it must work, because by the end of the lesson I have managed a smooth transition from backwards outside edge to forwards inside edge. My last level five skill, meaning that next week I will need to be up earlier for the level six class. What a reward, an earlier Sunday alarm. Such is life.
As for that momentous incoming change, that will have to wait for a future blog…
One Quiet Teacher 
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