GBR Team Announced for Rhythmic European Championships

British Gymnastics have named the team set to compete at the 2022 Rhythmic European Championships in June.

The Championships takes place in Tel Aviv, Israel, from 15th19th June, with Britain to be represented in the senior individual, senior group and junior individual competitions. arfa Ekimova (pictured) from West London is one of three senior individuals selected. Fresh off the back of her debut World Championships in October last year, she’ll be looking to gain more valuable experience in Israel.

Alice Leaper from Fylde Coast represented GBR at last year’s European Championships and has the opportunity to do the same this time around, and completing the senior individual line up is Louise Christie from Beacon who will make her major championship debut.

The senior group from I-Star Academy in Sussex includes Emily Austin, Rosina Cheale, Atanaska Kirilova, Isabella Mason-Iran, Isabella Rittman, Sasha Velicko, and they will also return having had a successful 2021 where they competed at both the European and World Championships.

The senior competition will run alongside the junior event, with Melissa Toma from Devotion, and Elizaveta Andreeva and Nicole Hill from Evolution named.

The life of Di

A monthly column by Di Wade, the author of ‘A Year In Verse’

HOW DOES YOUR COCKERDOODLE DO?

Funny what you think of strolling down the prom, quiet country lanes, or busy town streets. Somewhere between Rossall and Cleveleys on Good Friday, my parents and I met a guy walking a golden doodle - and all I could think, once I’d banished images of idle sketches with a 24-carrat pen, was that this had to beat a golden poo, but that a trick had surely been missed with the cockapoo - which should patently be a cockerdoodle, if only so one’s first question had to be, “How does your cockerdoodle do?”

Twenty-four hours later, I was onto the weather, or at least in terms of its apparent contemptibility as a conversational topic. Striding along a path at Nott-End, there was something wonderfully convivial about the world and his dog yelling, “Lovely day isn’t it?” with every enthusiasm as they hiked, biked, or dog-walked among the butterflies and bluebells. And what other subjects were they supposed to broach, Hegelian dialectics, the state of their sweet peas, the ubiquitous “match last night”? Moreover, it WAS a lovely day - and this was hardly Laos, where according to a monk doing a Thomas the Tank Engine jigsaw, their every day was lovely – provided by “lovely” one meant it’d let one fry an egg off the back of one’s neck. Here in god’s own county of northwest England by contrast, one truly could get four seasons in a day, (with no help whatever from Vivaldi or Nigel Kennedy), and only four days earlier, it’d been zonking it down as though cats, dogs, and stair rods were positively going out of fashion. It hadn’t exactly rained on my parade, but my sister had been visiting, and a planned day out at Lytham had quickly become a day in at Barton Grange, drooling over the garden furniture and giant barbecues it might’ve been nice to have if A, we could have afforded it, and B, there seemed any chance of a summer this year.

More to the point however, neither cockerdoodles nor weird weather wonderings could hold a candle to the silliness of life generally – I was soon reminded. Stopping off at a café before leaving Nott-End, we ordered tea for three, and a trio of cakes – on a waiter’s finally materializing. Several hours later, (by which point my dad had comprehensively put the motorbike world to rights with a bunch of blokes outside, and my mum and I had the meaning of life all but sussed), he reappeared – with three cakes, a pot and a cup, and seemed about to leave, before asking if we wanted sugar. We said no, but that a couple more cups might be nice – which bewildered him as it turned out he’d brought a pot of tea for one. He was then all for removing this, till we pointed out that he might as well leave it, and just bring two more. This in due course he did – along with a pile of the sugar we’d only just said we didn’t want. I’d to stuff a serviette in my mouth to prevent myself laughing, it was priceless.

Slightly less hilarious was an Amazon seller’s take on the lap tray my sister had kindly bought me for Easter. This not only turned out not to be what she’d ordered, but was so badly damaged that only its being sellotaped to within an inch of its life prevented its innards being shed all over the carpet. I was fuming on my sister’s behalf, even before she went on to spend most of her Easter Sunday night looking up the returns procedure. The barefaced cheek of the seller, were we not supposed to notice/care?

Still, Easter WAS predominantly all painted eggs and daffodils, while the subsequent St George’s Day came with an excellent production of Animal Farm - so plentiful reasons to be cheerful I decided - strolling down a lively South Pier on Mayday.