Skipping as I've never known

Its summer and not at at its worst yet. The children are all out of their woollen clothes, looking leaner but happier and definitely looking more their age. They keep paying fleeting visits in the midst of their hectic school and tution schedules. This week they turned up in a large group, wanted to sing songs , dance and have an impromptu fashion show . We had a bit of a pinneapple squash and someone yanked out a long string of rubber bands tied to each other. Before I had time to wonder what that was all about , some frenzied discussion took place and soon two of them were holding it knee high and a third did some pretty impressive skips around it. A skipping rope!!

Well they'd say I was easily impressed as for the 15 minuted that they kept at it , i witnessed a variety of stages and steps in skipping which I as a kid had never imagined! The job of the ones holding the rope was just to keep raising it in height according to the stage the players were at. Complicated manouvers involving , leaping, stepping on the rope , entangling it with the ankle/knee , jumping backwards and releasing it, almost diving over it etc. Maybe I'll get to shoot a video of this someday and share, I'm hoping that the skipping rope and the game as we knew it  never makes its way this side, we'd be laughing stock!