Today was the birthday of one of my sisters and of course we wanted to go out to dinner to celebrate. For a long time now she's been driving past a Vietnamese restaurant near her that she wanted to try. It's a funny looking place based in what was an old community swimming baths and is now a Vietnmaese community centre. So far so good.

Then I Googled it and boy does it get some bad reviews.

After a minor ponder of whether or not to go somewhere else (I mean who wants to knowingly go to a bad restaurant?) we figured that we'd only find out for sure by experiencing it ourselves and what do you know, we loved it. All the food was great and some of it was out-of-this-world good and the service was absolutely perfect, friendly, prompt, helpful etc. Now we may have got them on a good night and if we'd have visited at any other time it'd have been awful but at least we didn't miss out on our great experience.

But that wasn't enough bravery for me for one evening.

For a long time now, for so many reasons, I haven't been going to roller derby training and was really worried I'd not be physically, or mentally, able for it any more. Not only is it tough on your body, but the mental aspect of having complete confidence in yourself, confidence in what you're doing, knowing your tactics and implementing them, being aware of what everyone else is doing, being able to predict what every one's next move is going to be etc- all on roller skates usually at speed can be daunting. Really daunting. Losing your confidence makes you think too much about how you're skating or what you're doing rather than just getting on the track and doing it and I felt for sure my confidence was long gone and worried it was time for me to stop.

The longer I've been away the more I've convinced myself that not only would I have lost my physical ability to skate well (not that I ever really had it!) but that I would have lost my track awareness and general confidence. Not being confident at doing something is enough to deal without it happening as 5 other people potentially batter you!

But I went, I skated and I didn't suck anywhere near as bad as I thought I would have. It was beyond wonderful to see all my friends again, get some good exercise and lose myself in the World of derby for a few hours. Now I know I'm not ready to hand up my helmet for good just yet.