MANIOTOTO INDOOR CURLING — NASEBY

Right — you're going to throw it too hard. Everyone does. Every single person who has ever put a hand on a rock in this building has thrown the first one straight through the house and into the back boards, and then looked at me like the rock did it. It didn't. You did.

Below there is a sheet of ice. It is sheet 1, the good one. Press at the hack, drag back to load your slide, flick sideways as you let go to put a handle on, and then sweep in front of the running rock. That's it. That's the whole game and that's the whole sport, and if you can get a rock to stop in the four-foot down there you will still throw the first eight through the house on Thursday, because a screen is not ice and the ice is not flat.

Keyboard, if you'd rather: LEFT and RIGHT set your handle, hold DOWN to load and let go to throw, hold SPACE to sweep, press H to move the hack across the centre line. On the keys the sweeping is set to one rate and one rate only, so don't expect miracles out of it.

The number you want is the split. Back line to hog line. Four seconds flat is draw weight — that's a rock that stops in the house. Three and a half is takeout weight and it will remove whatever it hits and both of them will end up at the back boards. Three point nine is a rock in the back four-foot; four point one is a rock that hangs up at the top of the twelve and is in everybody's way. That's a tenth of a second between a good one and a nuisance. You cannot fix it after you let go. Nobody can, nobody ever has, and if anybody at the club tells you they can sweep a heavy rock down to draw weight they are having you on.

I do not watch the game. I watch a wet-bulb thermometer at the near end and the pressure gauge on plant. The building's dew point matters more than its temperature. Get a warm room full of people on a Friday and the dew point comes up to meet the ice and you get frost settling on the pebble heads, and frost grabs. Rocks come up a metre short all night and everyone blames their delivery. It isn't their delivery.

Surface is held at minus four point five. Half a degree of drift changes every draw in the building > and I've got one compressor working out of two, so it cycles harder and longer than I'd like and the surface follows it up and down about three tenths either way. Second compressor is off to Alexandra when I can get it on a trailer.

The thing I'm pleased about: in June I got sheet 1 level to a tenth of a degree end to end. Readings off the infra-red at eleven points: −4.52, −4.48, −4.51, −4.55, −4.50, −4.49, −4.53, −4.51, −4.47, −4.52, −4.50. That is a tenth of a degree across 42 metres of concrete and I did it by hand off one plant.

Falls. No rink floor on earth is level and ours isn't either. Sheet 2 falls very slightly to the boards side about three-quarters of the way down, and every regular here knows it and throws a bit wide of it and none of it is written down anywhere. Sheet 1 is honest. Mostly.

Rock 6, yellow. Went off the back of a trailer in 1994 coming back from a bonspiel, chipped the running band, got dressed once by a man in Alexandra and has never run right since. Everybody here knows 6 and throws it as a guard. It's in the set and it stays in the set.

Granite. Our set is Ailsa Craig common green with four blue hone. The band is turned on a lathe to a set radius and roughness, and if it's gone glassy or chipped it will not curl for you no matter what you do with a broom, and that isn't your fault and it isn't the broom's.

Every Thursday somebody books in and turns up in soft canvas shoes with no grip and bare hands, and then stands at the near end getting cold and not enjoying it, and I have to lend them my spare gloves which never come back.

CLEAN FLAT-SOLED SHOES THAT HAVE NOT BEEN OUTSIDE, AND GLOVES. GLOVES. THE ROCK HANDLE IS AT MINUS FOUR AND A HALF DEGREES AND SO IS EVERYTHING ELSE YOU WILL TOUCH.

Shoes that have been through the carpark bring grit onto the sheet and grit is worse than frost. Bring a second pair in a bag. And bring gloves — woollen ones are fine, they don't have to be anything special, they just have to be on your hands.

Also: two and a half turns. Not ten. A rock spun hard goes straighter, which is not what you think and I'm not going to argue about it, just try both.

On the dam if it holds, in here if it doesn't. Teams of four, $40 a rink, sausages included, start 8:30am. We have 34 rinks in and I want 46 by the 30th. Fill this in and it goes on the list at the bottom of this page; I check the page and I ring you. If you haven't got a team, put your name down anyway and say NO to skip and I'll put you with somebody — that is how half the rinks in this district got made.

• 7pm sharp, back door, the one on the spring. Lights are on from 6.
• $6 a night. Season ticket $95, or $60 if you're at the area school.
• First half hour you slide with a stabiliser and don't throw anything.
• Then eight rocks each, both handles, and I stand behind you and tell you your split time out loud every single time because that is the only number that will teach you anything.
• Bar's open after. Fridge is loud. Ignore it.
• Shoes and gloves. Third time I've said it.

Off the board in the office.
Callum scanned it.

Phone the rink Tue/Thu/Sat after 4pm, or leave a note under the office door. If the door's locked I'm under the plant and you'll have to bang on it.