Hilarie: Fancy a bit of juggling, or snakeboarding?

Feb 27 2010 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

WE ALWAYS know when Secondborn is practising with her juggling balls because we can hear the occasional muffled thud from her bedroom.

After a while she appears at the living room door and invites us to watch while she demonstrates how clever she is keeping three balls up in the air at once.

As someone who feels to have spent most of my life metaphorically juggling, the real thing looks so effortless that I usually ask if I can have a go and we try two-person juggling with three balls across the room.

Invariably this doesn’t go quite as well and The Man-in-Charge starts shouting; “Watch the lights/cats/my drink/the ornaments.” I have found it only takes a second to destroy a potted plant. But I’m getting better.

The interest in juggling and circus skills is a relatively new thing for The Girl. If I was the suspicious sort I might think she was preparing to run away with a circus, should her A levels not come up to scratch. She’s been talking about needing a ‘fall back’ plan. Maybe this is it.

My colleague Nick says his sister once joined a Russian circus, as a trapeze artist, but only lasted a week because she found herself living in a Portacabins in a damp field miles from anywhere.

“She also under-estimated how tough it was going to be. You need to be very fit,” he explained.

For ‘toss juggling’ (the correct term for keeping several balls, clubs etc in the air at once) it’s more a question of having good co-ordination. But The Girl is also interested in something called ‘snakeboarding’ which requires skill, co-ordination and fitness.

I’d never heard of it but a quick trawl of the internet has revealed that snakeboarding is just one of many activities enjoyed by circus skills enthusiasts all over the world. Snakeboards look like skateboards but have a jointed middle that allows them to ‘snake’.

There is, I have discovered, a European Juggling Federation with an Internet Juggling Database, from which budding jugglers and snakeboarders can find a club. And there are a surprisingly large number of clubs.

England alone has more than 100. Huddersfield University has one, as do quite a few other universities, while the next nearest to us is in Hebden Bridge, home to all things alternative and quirky.

It is for Hebden Bridge that Secondborn departs every Wednesday evening to hone her circus skills. We’re not allowed to stay and watch but when we go to pick her up she’s to be found strapped to a pair of stilts, legging it across the room like a giraffe, or refining her toss juggling. Whatever she’s doing she’s clearly having a good time. Over the years we, like many parents, have introduced our offspring to a range of activities, mainly, it has to be said, sports enjoyed by myself and the Man-in-Charge.

However, as they’ve grown into adulthood the offspring have chosen their own interests, quite different from ours.

Firstborn has become a caver, tackling underground chimneys and caverns with a missionary zeal. It is possibly the last thing I would ever have introduced him to but he’s found for himself a sport that ticks all the right boxes – it’s exciting, dirty, dangerous, manly and sociable, particularly in the pub afterwards.

Ditto Secondborn’s juggling. Even my fevered imagination could not have dreamed up such an unusual way for her to spend her spare time. But it’s fun, interesting, different and sociable, although we’re not quite at the pub-afterwards stage.

She joined the club along with a group of school friends, some of whom snakeboard like sidewinders.

Each session costs only £1 for the unwaged and all juggling balls are provided, which makes it an activity open to all.

Who knows? I may try it for myself.

l For details of clubs check out www.jugglingdb.com/clubs