Andy's Blog

Something seems to be in the air, nothing that you can definitively put your finger on, but I get the feeling in these old bones that some of the old order is about to go through something of a change.

“The only constant in life is change” is the old saying that gets trotted out every so often by people looking to be wiser than their years, but sometimes you can’t help but feel wistful for the way things were.

I dunno, maybe I just feel that friendships are about to alter in some manner and that it’s back to the fringes for me… sometimes it’s just too difficult to maintain what seems to be a declining position and stay involved.  Ah well, time to batten down the hatches, hold on tightly to whatever comes to hand and see where this ride will take me.

As mentioned in a previous blog post the sparring that’s required to progress as a sensei  can be brutal, but is something you feel cheated out of when not given a pasting around the dojo.  Personally, when in these sparring sessions with my Sensei, I only have two milestones on which I try and judge my progress;

1. To try and block more kicks and punches than actually land.
2. To make sensei sweat, at least just a little bit, for all the blood he’s about to extract from my tortured body.

Unfortunately after a little while you tend to lose count of how many punches and kicks you *have* blocked as the ones you *didn’t* take up slightly more of your attention… or start to make you lose attention… and consciousness!  However I do think I saw a hint of a bead of sweat on Sensei’s forehead after our bout, just a hint mind.

I shall take some solace in the fact that his hands and feet must have been slightly irritated from all the repeated impacts on the facial bum-fluff I call a beard.

Update: Sometimes writing in the dead of night makes for piss poor prose and something that maybe could have been written a little better.  The last couple of paragraphs took an eternity to write and even then I wasn’t entirely convinced that what I had written put over what I was trying to…

Next time, wait until a more ‘godly’ hour…

I think it’s time I try to put into practise what I learn in karate every week, and try to kick something; namely my own arse and actually commit to updating this blog at least once a week, no matter how boring that could actually get… for the reader!  Rather alarmingly I found out on Monday that someone actually reads this thing, which is always nice, but the posts are somewhat few and far between.

So there’s the promise; I shall henceforth attempt to put keyboard to screen and write something on this thing at least once a week – now that may be at the beginning, mid, or end of the week, but it shall be updated.

As for this week, I have mostly been leaving bits of me all over the UK; my stomach’s still in a hotel conference room in Wolverhampton, my co-ordination has been left at a karate seminar in Coventry, my heart’s in Scotland, my brain is still in bed and my common sense has been AWOL for more years than I care to admit to.

I’m not entirely sure I’ll ever be able to collect all these parts any time soon but I’ll give it a whirl and hopefully at least get the brain engaged before the next post is due.  Till then….

My arms ache.  The back of my thighs ache.  My shoulders aren’t feeling too grand either.  Even my damned eyes are feeling a little peeky!   Essentially easy tasks, like going up stairs, now seem to have taken on epic journey status.

Add to the above list of bodily whinings; my Gi seems to have developed sentience, through the shear amount of DNA sweated into it, and is at this moment in time hatching a cunning plan, with my sparring gear, to escape from my karate bag.

..there is also the very distinct possibility that a number of people have a sneakily taken picture of my nads, in an effort to prove or disprove an old Scottish custom.

Welcome to my first Blackbelt Leadership Conference.  To try and put down into words what I learnt at the conference is just not possible, or needs a lot more space than I am physically able to provide… I did mention about my aching arms didn’t I?

Let’s just say having two days of being in a room full of black belts, of a dizzying array of dans, being taught by Kancho was terrifying and I still haven’t managed to stop grinning yet!  That despite me losing more sweat than is probably healthy and is currently causing the washing machine all kinds of headaches at the moment.

What made the weekend that more special, other than the excellent karate, was the other lessons learnt.  Namely;

• Boom-shakalaka is a power word  …I am still trying to understand *what* a power word is, but I now know what one sounds like.
• All that looks like stone is not necessarily so.
• Mint and Pea should never, and I repeat NEVER, have unprotected sex and leave their prodigy in my soup bowl ever again.
• That the sentence “..let yourself go and feel yourself release” should be a lot more qualified when trying to hypnotise a roomful of black belts; the air extraction units had some trouble dealing with this “release”.
• The smells and tastes forced upon us in childhood have a profound impact on our adulthood; one person’s tinned new potatoes is another persons gristle-laden lamb  (…this is probably the deepest I will get in this blog post!)
• All that looks like chocolate cake is not necessarily so.
• Trying to find a witty retort, or any retort, to someone’s breakfast admission that they were complimented on the pinkness of their anus is really a lot harder than you can imagine.  Just…. don’t go there.
• “Going behind the bushes” had a different connotation when I was younger… boy did I come down to earth with a bump!
• Somebody’s birthday present, next year, will physically bring a tear to their eye… and a look of horror to anyone who witnesses it.
• Wedding guests have THE longest orgy ever… that or the people in the hotel room next to mine were just loudly agreeing with each other and never actually arriving anywhere.

I’m not sure I will get invited to the conference next year, but I bloody well hope so.  It was a real highlight of the year and awe inspiring to watch the higher grades do karate as it’s meant to be done, and watching Sensei get some rich reward for the work he’s put into the region.

..however, for me now I have a date with a so-hot-it’ll-sear-your-skin-off bath and a bed where I don’t have to listen to people humping.  Toodle-pip!