My breath was misting in front of me, the ground beneath my studded boots was setting solid and I was losing all sensation in my toes as the sun moved round casting shadows across the pitch and the sub-zero air temperatures did their thing to turn the second eleven training pitch into permafrost. My fingers were turning blue, probably matching my lips and cheeks. I briefly considered releasing my ponytail so at least I had some cover over my ears but despite the cold I'd been running round and my hair was damp with sweat and I doubted whether I'd get any benefit, on top of which hair flicking round your face is uncomfortable at the best of times, when it's wet and sweaty and you're bloody freezing it makes a crew-cut feel like a good idea.
The huddle of players to my right had a sudden flurry of activity, Charlotte, our right defender took a crack at the ball, I heard a solid 'thunk' as her carbon-fibre stick smacked the ball right in the sweet spot. "Lucy, yours" shouted across to me, superfluously as it happened, despite the cold I was alert and had set off at a sprint to intercept the bright red sphere, taking an outrageous amount of pleasure in wrongfooting the opposition defender, my colleague in the right midfield, Nina, came pounding up slightly behind and ten metres across from me. I knew she was there; she knew I knew so we didn't need to shout about it.
There was a fullback and a sweeper closing on me, the padded figure of the goalkeeper huddled in her net, I feinted to my left, taking a half step, just enough to sell the dummy completely, reversed my stick and flicked to my right. Nina came sprinting in and gave the ball a fearsome smack sending it straight past the keeper to hit the backboard with an audible bang that echoed around the ground.
The whistle blew and we were called into a huddle. The coach, Peggy Wilson, ex England commonwealth games squad in the nineteen seventies, pointed at five of us on the blue team and three on the red and said "OK, you eight, I've seen enough. Go and get changed, and don't use all the hot water." She pointed across the pitch at a smaller huddle of girls in puffa coats, "Next eight, you're up." As I walked off the pitch I heard her splitting the teams up again, all the better to assess individuals and groupings.
It was January 2001 and we were enjoying, if enjoying is the right word, a sudden harsh cold spell. Air temperatures once you were out of the sun were around minus four, it had been going on for three weeks now and in the middle of week two our former chief coach, Hilary Carson, had slipped on an icy path and broken her hip, ankle and wrist. She was in traction and wouldn't be back for three or four months. The University Hockey club committee put their collective heads together, sent an SOS to the old alumni and Peggy answered the call. This was our first session with her, and she wanted to see us all in action before the first match. The fact that it was the coldest January for twenty years was immaterial.
My hands were so numb I couldn't grip the zipper on my kit bag to get my towel and shower gel, so I sat, pushing my hands deep into my thighs for five minutes, the cold from my fingers seeping up through my crotch as they slowly thawed and gained enough flexibility to grip and pull. My nipples were so hard as to be almost solid, the areolae beneath each crinkled and compressed by the cold. Without obviously checking her out I noticed Nina's were in almost the same state, apart from being bigger and a deeper shade of pink than mine. I couldn't feel my toes and my feet felt like solid lumps under my ankles.
I stripped off my sweaty top, sports bra, skirt, knickers and socks, standing on them as I searched in the bag for my flip flops. Always take flip flops into the shower, you don't know what's been going on in there, and the changing room floor is so cold it may as well be made of ice, which I couldn't feel while I undressed but with luck the shower would warm me up again and I'd need them for the return trip.
One of the things Peggy had insisted was that we used the men's first eleven changing room, the girls was a relic from the nineteen forties, individual cubicles to change in for modesty's sake and four individual shower booths. She'd arranged for it to be gutted and replaced with a new open plan room with a shared bank of ten showers at one end. As she said, "We've all got the same bits, if anyone thinks you can prepare for a sports match on your own go and become a sprinter or throw darts. We are a team, we change as a team, we work as a team." The reconstruction was due to kick off in two weeks but she'd condemned ours immediately, consequently I was sitting with seven other girls in various stages of undress as we shivered our way naked.
Nina was already under a torrent of steaming water, moaning to herself. I flipped and flopped my way to the shower head next to her, hung my shower gel and shampoo bottles on the chrome pipes and gave the button a solid push. A stream of cold water gushed out, even though I was close to frozen already it made me gasp but a moment later it came through warm and built up to a steady heat.
The hot water made my body tingle, then as the blood started returning to the outer edges of my skin the pain set in, I realised immediately why Nina had been moaning, it was because she had more self-control than me. I was in agony, my toes and fingers were throbbing as the feeling came back, my bum and thighs felt like they were on fire and my arms, shoulders and chest felt like they'd been slapped for about a week.
I felt I had to speak or I'd scream so I turned my head sideways to look at Nina, "Jesus bastard Christ almighty, that hurts, all over. How can my elbows hurt?"
Nina laughed, she was Scottish and liked to pretend she was hardier than us home counties girls, to hear her talk you'd think she grew up in a Glasgow council estate and we were all former members of the Godalming and Bramley Green Pony club. In fact, as I well knew because I'd been there, her parents lived on twelve acres near Innerleithen in the Borders and I'd been brought up in Lordshill in Southampton, which is a big and rundown council estate.
"Aye, it's a wee bit fresh, I'll gie ye that." Then slipped out of her affected Glaswegian and back into her gentler normal accent, "I'm kinda hoping the weather's going to turn before we have to go out and do it for real. I had a wee chat with Linda and she's been asked to rearrange the fixtures for the rest of the season, so we've got three weeks grace for the weather to turn."
She poured a generous handful of white gel into her hand and slapped it on her breasts, hung the bottle up and massaged an explosion of coconut scented bubbles across her firm boobs. I followed suit and a pineapple aroma added to the atmosphere. Jill, one of the defensive players stepped in and took the next shower head along, "Smells like a Pina Colada in here, who's up for cocktails later?" Jill's great, she's usually the orchestrator of the post-match 'entertainment' and runs the social side of the club. "Rules are you've got to drink what you smell like."
Nina and I swapped our bottles over, so we had Pineapple and Coconut, and started a naked duet of "Yes I like Pina Colada and getting caught in the rain". Jill squirted her minty shower gel into her hand and started lathering on the tattoo of a dove on her right side just under the fold of her large, slightly floppy, breast, calling out "Anyone got Lime shower gel? I fancy a night on the Mojitos."
Kerry J, we've got two Kerries, Kerry J and Kerry Berry, only called Kerry Berry because she had a berry smoothie on our first ever club night out a year and a half before, Kerry J came shivering in with a bottle of mint gel and squealed as the water hit her.
