Rewriting My P.E. Legacy

Tuesday 5th December 2010, 4.30pm, Peace Cafe - Dalat

I am very proud of myself today, and for good reason. I don't know how many times in my life I have felt genuine pride in something I have done but I think I could count the occasions on one hand - in fact now I deliberate it I'm struggling to remember any! OK, so passing the entrance exams and earning a place at my secondary school, having some work I'd done in my GCSE Drama class photocopied and handed round to other students as an example, getting a 1st on an essay at University that everyone else failed (although this one is questionable, it was the fluke of the century). Those three will do, and all mundanely and sedately academia related, because as a general rule I'm a thinker not a do-er; I can get full marks on a theory test having never read the teaching manual or looked at the practice CD-rom, but I can't actually drive the damn car. Not today though! Today I tried my very best to not think at all, otherwise I may very well have not abseiled down a 25 metre high waterfall, which I DID.

We went Canyoning. When we booked this day trip yesterday I was mercifully ignorant as to the exact nature of this sport, I knew it involved something to do with waterfalls, swimming and perhaps some light trekking, and I figured these activities were all within my coping remit. However, as I discovered from 8am until 3pm today, I was woefully mistaken about Canyoning. It is in fact rock climbing without ropes, clambering down jungle mountain slopes, jumping off 10 metre high ledges into natural pools of freezing water of which you can't see the bottom, sliding head first on your back down steep, rocky, fast flowing streams. It is abseiling over the side of sheer vertical drop cliff faces and gargantuan torrents of waterfalls until your guide instructs you to 'drop the rope!' so that you are plummeted underwater by the full force of the 25 metres of gushing fall above you, before you bob up like a drowned little rat somewhere down stream and are dragged on to the muddy riverbank by your helmet. This is the most accurate way I can describe Canyoning, and I forget to mention that after a day full of these kind of adventures you then have to hike for 30 minutes back up the cliff face in order to reach the highway and your ride home - by which stage you are so physically exhausted and battered from limb to limb that you feel like taking one more step might kill you. I could have kissed that minibus driver when I saw him waiting for us on the road, so relived was I to not have died and my gravestone epitaph having been engraved, 'She always thought but never did, but then she did and now she's dead: some people are not cut out for extreme sports.'

This reminds me of a time at school, when the P.E. staff, attempting some impression of being a real subject in order to justify their classification as "teachers", asked everyone in my year group to write a sporting epitaph for themselves, 'what would it say on your gravestone in regards to your sporting career and accomplishments?' I, being highly derisive and contemptuous towards anything P.E. related, and thinking it hilariously and inappropriately morbid for "teachers" to ask 15 year olds to write their own obituaries, did not take the set exercise too seriously. I handed in a piece of paper that read simply, 'At least this is one place they can't make me run.' It didn't go down too well, but my working relationship with the P.E. staff continued as it had always done - they thought I was a lazy smart-arse, and I thought they were uneducated, barely literate Neanderthal bullies who had only managed to secure employment because they were good at throwing and catching. There was an unspoken mutual understanding.

I am a girl who treated cross-country as an afternoon nature walk, stopping off to stroke and feed the horses in the neighbouring field to the dulcet accompanying tones of an exasperated Mrs Barratt screeching 'Grace! Move!'. I did handstands in the swimming pool when I should have been participating in relay races, I ducked out the way if someone threw a ball at me, whilst in defence at an inter-house hockey match I invented the ingenious game '100 Things To Do With a Hockey Stick Other Than Play Hockey', tennis lessons were spent impersonating Wimbledon stars of the 80's and calling out nonsense scores, 'that's 40 love juice 20 advantage match point to me!', I point blank refused to do anything on Sports Day other than sunbathe and read a book, and with a sly grin and a glint in my eye I would tell Mr Marshall, 'I'm awfully sorry Sir, I won't be able to do the long jump today because I'm on my period.'

So you see, this is why I am proud of myself. I, Grace Gillman, P.E. "teacher" arch nemesis and worst nightmare, spoiler of team games and competitive sport, Professional Lazy Smart-Arse, today amidst the beauty and the ferocity of Dalat's jungle mountain range of waterfalls, accomplished daredevil stunts and feats of physical exertion that I did not know myself capable of (the next time I go to the gym I shall laugh in the face of the cross-trainer). It was bloody hard work and a good 80% of the day I was filled with abject terror, I have a few more cuts and bruises and every one of the four others I went Canyoning with agree that their legs also now feel like lumpy jelly. But it was incredible, a pure adrenalin rush and one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. I would do it all again tomorrow... or maybe the day after tomorrow, even the finest sporting superstars need muscle recovery time.

Before I came away one of my friends was telling me about a self-help book she had recently purchased called 'Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway'. On the sleepless, restless nights of the week before I boarded my flight I repeated this title to myself whilst staring up at the ceiling of my bedroom in the darkness; yes Grace, you're terrified about leaving, but do it anyway. That is what I feel I have achieved today, I was scared, but decided for once in my life to just DO without thinking, and boy was it worth it. I know some of you will be greatly amused by this, but I loved it so much that I am actually considering taking up indoor rock climbing and abseiling as a future sporting activity!

I'd like to think that my former foes, the P.E. staff at Coopers Coborn School, would also be proud of me today. That they would take heart and encouragement in the fact that I didn't turn out so bad, eventually I learnt to embrace physical activity as an enjoyable pastime. Now, as for my sporting epitaph, my gravestone testimony, hmmm....

'Once upon a time there was a day when she did the unthinkable and went Canyoning, and it didn't kill her. Unfortunately a traumatised, revenge-seeking, cricket bat-wielding Mrs Barratt did. But she probably deserved it, the lazy smart-arse.'