Years ago, when I used to juggle a lot, I'd always notice that when I spent a whole evening juggling for the first time in a while (e.g. coming back to university at the start of term and attending the first meeting of the juggling society), my legs would hurt the next morning from all the crouching down to pick up dropped things.

I had completely forgotten this phenomenon, but I belatedly remembered it this morning, after james_r brought a bag of juggling kit to sonicdrift and mobbsy's party yesterday. I'm glad I'm down for spending most of today sitting in front of a computer!

Still, it was fun to dust off some old skills, although I had a little of the same problem as I had last year playing the violin at aiwendel's do. (Gosh, apparently that party was a year before this one to the day. 11th July is clearly my personal Resurrect An Old Skill Day.) I could remember what I used to be able to do, and although I gave a reasonable account of myself, I knew I was distressingly out of practice. Come to think of it, I had much the same problem as with the violin: the tricks I wanted to do were things I no longer had the skill for, but I improved later in the evening as I toned down my own expectations and moved over to doing simpler stuff that I could still manage.

It was also fun to see some novice jugglers having a go later on and to give them (hopefully) helpful advice. That was another thing we used to do all the time at the university juggling society, but I'd forgotten just how satisfying it could be to see somebody's skill visibly improve in a period of hours.

(I also got comically clonked on the head by an incoming club while attempting to pass with James, but I think that must have looked more painful than it actually was. I've had worse things happen to me recently!)