It’s been a while since I wrote about skating. I took it up because I wanted a physical activity that was rewarding, fun and physically demanding. Skateboarding delivered on all three counts and saved me from the horrors of gym membership.

I found a car park behind my work which had an extremely convenient skateboard wheel sized crack in it. This allows you to stand on the board and not worry about it shooting out from under you. I’ve just been going out every day, standing there for an hour trying to drill it into my legs. And like everything the more you do something the better you get at it. Every couple of days something would click, I’d figure out that if I lifted my back foot off the board really fast (aka “jumping”) the board would come up higher this sounds incredibly obvious but just having the confidence to really jump off your tail is a big step.

I’d been riding a skateboard into working every day for a month or so (I realise I'm becoming more like Nathan Barley by the week) when I decided that I wanted to learn some tricks. The most essential skate trick is the Ollie, a jump on a skateboard where the board rises as you jump. To somebody whose only ever played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater it seems easy, it is not.