Age Inappropriate Activities: My Neck, My Back.

My neck, my back, both my wrists are going to crack.

Yesterday I went Go Karting. Not sure it’s something I’d recommend for someone in their mid-forties with joints that feel as though they’re made from chalk and rust. The last time I went was over twenty years ago and I remember none of the associated acute and non-acute pains that I now find myself enduring.

I don’t even know how I ended up in a go kart; the day started very normally and I had no intention of spending my evening surrounded by kids who were hyped up on blue slushies, breathing in air that was approximately 87% carbon monoxide and squeezing myself into a contraption that looked like something I made from Meccano, Christmas ‘87.

But my nine year-old wanted to go, he was allowed a “treat” of his choosing for reasons I won’t bore you with and that is what he chose. He’s quite into the Go Karting idea, in the way that nine year-olds are into anything, ie for around three hours until the next enthusiasm comes along. I am not into the Go Karting idea, because it has to be one of the most expensive hobbies a child could come up with, after, I don’t know, horse-riding. Skiing? None of these things are within my remit, I have no idea, I’m just guessing. They all sound expensive and look expensive. We had Youth Club and Brownies in my day and both of those cost 75p per session.

(My Mum will be going crackers if she reads this. YOU ALL HAD MUSIC LESSONS AND THEY COST ME A FORTUNE! Which is true. But at least with music lessons there’s some sort of cap to the equipment needed. You just buy one flute, for example. You don’t then have to buy shoes and saddle for the flute, or tyres and petrol for the flute, or pay for the flute to go somewhere that has snow and a ski lift. I’ve lost my way with that analogy, haven’t I?)

Anyway, yes. I have no plans to allow Go Karting to become a hobby unless the nine year-old suddenly displays some kind of superhuman prowess for taking chicanes at top speed, but the odd go, now and then, totally on board with. And yesterday was a “now and then” so I went online to try and book a session. Popular, this karting thing! The only session left for kids was in something called “family hour” and, the booking site stated, an adult had to “race” too.

Picturing happy mums and dads pootling about the track, waving to their little offspring and generally having a wholesome time, I booked two adult tickets (no way Rich was getting out of it) and one for the nine year-old and off we went. Checked in. Bought balaclavas. Gloves. Got handed racesuits, which were actually quite cool-looking. Changed into the racesuits, which frankly looked ridiculous on us adults but cute on the nine year-old. Went and stood with the other families down in the pit and - OH!

What other families? No other families, that’s who. Just eight other kids ranging from approx. nine years old to maybe twelve or thirteen, and then me and Rich looking like the village idiots, standing there gigantically with our stupid balaclavas on, about three feet taller than the next tallest human. You know the adults who go on the tiny children’s rides, at Disney, without children? That’s who we looked like. I felt as though I’d gone to a party in fancy dress when everyone else was in normal attire. Never have I felt so conspicuous.

The balaclavas didn’t help. I was hoping there’d be a bit of Days of Thunder frisson, perhaps Rich would look a bit titillating and I’d later want him to, you know, fine tune my engine. But no. He had a black balaclava covering his head and lower half of his face and looked like a medieval baron awaiting his chainmail before battle. I had a bright blue balaclava on that exposed my entire face and looked exactly like Dangerous Brian.

The indignity didn’t stop there. Have you ever tried to climb into a Go Kart? Recently? The angle at which you are required to descend into the seat is barely achievable unless you’re at an age where your skeleton is yet to fully fuse together. You must lower yourself to ground level, with your feet and legs extended all the way in front of you, basically cantilevering yourself to defy gravity, all via the knee joints. I almost snapped. Try doing that with nine boys lined up in their karts behind you. Wearing a crash helmet that’s making you feel incredibly panicked. (I’m a bit claustrophobic. Hadn’t ever thought putting on a crash helmet would trigger it but there you go!)

Now before we go on know this: I am no stranger to the concept of the racetrack. I was car obsessed as a late teen and into my early twenties and the entire road system of Redditch, Worcestershire, was my racetrack. How I’m still alive I have no idea. It wasn’t clever, and it makes me physically cringe now when I think about it, but you feel invincible at that age and I did learn how to recover from high speed spins, slides and potentially fatal skids at a relatively tender age. Sorry Mum. Fast forward a few decades and I’ve also done a little bit of low-key racing about the place at Silverstone, with Porsche: I get the general gist of what you’re supposed to do. Go as fast as possible but take the best, most efficient lines and do not spin or hit the barriers or other cars.

“This is NOT bumper cars.” Said the safety man in our safety briefing, which we all had to sit through for twelve minutes but then promptly forgot half of.

So the only part I wasn’t worried about was the driving part, not in the slightest. I love driving. Go Kart track? Not. A. Problem.

Well. I can tell you that a go kart is nothing like a car. No heated seat, which is one of the great joys in life in my opinion, but also, steering so heavy that it was like trying to drive one of those eighteen wheeler American trucks from the 1950s. I’ve driven a World War 2 tractor (don’t ask) and that had lighter steering than my go kart! I immediately felt my wrists start to seize, the muscles going into spasm. Every corner felt like a monumental effort, like I was the captain of a ship trying to navigate away from an iceberg during a world-ending storm.

But it was all good fun once we got started. Rich warned me not to be competitive, which I didn’t quite understand because I am the least competitive person ever, and hello we were racing with children so it wasn’t as though I was going to be blocking them from overtaking me, whilst at the same time aggressively overtaking those in front, all whilst screaming “TAKE THAT, YOU LITTLE MOTHERFUCKERS!”

Was it.

So apart from the lasting damage to my skeletal-muscular system I have no real complaints, other than it was very noisy (which I hate), fume-y (gave me a headache) and people kept crashing into the barriers which meant we all had to be on a go-slow every thirty seconds. Have you ever driven a go kart at walking pace? It feels like the most pointless exercise ever invented. I’d have rather just been able to put my brakes on and have a little rest. Stretch out the wrists. Do a bit of meditative body-scanning to see whether all of the parts of my spine were still connected.

I know what you’re asking yourself: where did she rank on the leaderboard? And I shall tell you, if you insist. Third! Absolutely bloody delighted, even though the majority of the competition hadn’t had twenty-eight years of driving experience and were half my height. You have to take the wins where you can in this life, even when it’s a bronze. Had people not kept crashing all over the shop - amateurs - I’m pretty sure I’d have been up there on the podium, shaking champagne all over myself whilst all of the normal parents watched on, thinking what is that mad bint DOING?

I do wonder what the other parents thought of us, me and Rich, whizzing about on our human-sized karts while all the miniature people did their thing. It was all a bit Gulliver’s Travels. And I couldn’t understand why these parents weren’t having to race too, when I was sure that the booking form had explicitly said family hour and that adults had to race alongside their children. I was going to take it up at reception on my way out but I was too busy inwardly gloating. I had come third, not rammed any children out of the way - not even my own child! - and had even mostly kept my cool when one of them had overtaken me when the yellow light was flashing, when it was STRICTLY NO OVERTAKING YOU LITTLE SHIT!

Would I recommend it as an adults-fun activity? Not really. I woke up with hands that felt as though they’d spent the past eight months digging me out of Alcatraz and a backbone that apparently had fused itself into one unbendable unit overnight. My neck! My back! But third. Out of eleven. The thrill. Maybe it was all worth it…

*this is a joke, I do actually do quite a lot of heavy lifting. But the side to side steering movement is another thing altogether, I think.

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