Andy's Blog

This year has been memorable for a lot of reasons and also particularly tough, especially this past month as the year draws to its end.

However one thing that has been a constant throughout is the joy at teaching a group of awesome people karate, especially seeing them grow in skill and confidence, as well as progressing through their belts.

To make an outstanding dojo doesn’t just require a good Sensei, not that I class myself anything other than OK, but also an outstanding bunch of people who give both 100% of themselves and their characters to make the dojo a friendly place to train in.. and I have the pleasure of having such students *and* Sempai’s.

There are parts of this year I will try and forget pretty quickly, and I hope will not haunt me next year, however the absolute blast I have had teaching at both Corby and Irthlingborough is not one of those.

The last karate classes taught for 2010 have just been completed and not a bigger laugh could be had.  To any students reading this; Guys, it has been an ABSOLUTE pleasure teaching you and I look forward to 2011 …I will also always have this picture which makes me laugh insanely *every* time I look at it (click on it for a larger version)!

Not firing at one hundred percent at the moment, which is really rather annoying.

It’s always said that the things that matter most are hard won but easily lost, and this seems to be happening somewhat frequently… with only one thing constant; yours truly.  So the blame seems to lie in one place only and am not entirely sure what to do about that.

In the meantime the goal of nearly 5 years hard, and sometimes frustrating, work is starting to look like it may be achievable.

Nothing is ever guaranteed, of course, but as Lao Tzu wrote; “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”.  So time to put one, solitary, foot in front of the other and see whether this now personal journey gets me to where I want to go..

..minus those hard won and easily lost.

I’ve had enough of being an adult for the moment, so I am sat down with The Complete Collection of Bill Watterson’s excellent Calvin & Hobbes comic strips.  There are worse ways to develop an ethos on which to live your life, but no better way to just chill at the end of a long day.

I’ve been reading these for the past few days, and have even plagiarised some of their more memorable quotes, which seems to have been taken rather more literally than I had originally anticipated.  Ah well, you can’t always help what others decide what you’re all about.

So I’ll continue to be the quiet one in the corner, to be the idiot on the internet, to make sure I always go “Oof” at the right time, to be the pain in the ass when your room begins to fester, to be the geek who’ll fix your PC, to smile at the pants, to step aside without complaint… but more importantly, and outside of your conception, the big kid I’ve always been on the inside.

As the Chris Antonak quote goes; “Aging is mandatory, maturity is optional.”

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…

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!

I’ve been away in sunnier climes these past three weeks, and that will be my standing excuse for the lack of any postings on this site recently – you may find that I’m able to make these excuses on an as-required basis throughout this blog; the only constant being my inability to get the wordsmithing juices flowing at a constant rate… that or a mind numbingly boring life!

…actually I fear it’s a combination of the two!

Anyhoo, beginning of a new week and my first senior karate class has just been completed and I’ve received my first black mark on my belt.  Of course ‘completed’ is a subjective term; survived is another one that could be used just as well.

Karate is something that you need to keep plugging away at every week, so even a small time away and you feel horribly uncoordinated. Arms, legs and various other appendages were waggled during the class, sometimes even when they were supposed to!

..oh and the black mark?  Just an indication of some progress in my karate – so a good thing!  Quite how I got it, given the unwieldy state of my moves yesterday, is somewhat beyond me; there’s a *lot* of things that need improving, kicks being chief among them.  I think I may need to impart some of my hard earned cash (‘hard earned’ also being another of those subjective terms) into purchasing one of those mechanical devices for improving ones flexibility.

That's it... a bit more!

Onwards and upwards as I keep saying… and outwards, possibly, as well.

The large yellow glowing object, so very foreign to these shores, has made an appearance in the large blue expanse above our heads.  The birds are out, feathered variety I hasten to add, flowers are blooming and all around are more pale skinny legs than you could shake a proverbial stick at – yes, summer has arrived!  In an uncomfortably sticky way.

I like Summer, I really do, however anything above 18c and I really *REALLY* begin to suffer.  Unfortunately, for some of my colleagues, adding Karate to this “uncomfort” has the frankly undesirable effect of me producing copious amounts of sweat.

This past week has been full on with Karate; a Seminar weekend, teaching classes and attending senior training.  I think I may have lost twice my body weight in delicate perspiration.. or at least that’s what I tell myself.

Ah well, as a great philosopher once intoned, “The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devils own satanic herd”… although he probably never had to wrestle with a fragrantly soaked 16oz heavyweight Gi whilst trying to air it.

..and it is this sweatiness that I shall use as an excuse for the black eye I received at the seminar, that or ninjas!  Lots and lots of Ninjas!  That’ll keep my students quiet and not asking why I didn’t “block” the offending punch.

I think this Summer is gonna be a long and steamy one from a karate perspective.  Which’ll be fun, especially at grading time – running around trying to catch wilting students before they face-plant the dojo floor.  I also have the slightly uncomfortable feeling that this coming July grading shares the same  space as one’s day of birth.

*sigh*… ok, time to go and practise my kicks (which are woeful at the moment) and think of some more excuses as to why I’ve gotten the shiner before my students asks any hard questions.

Oh, and a *HUGE* Big Up and best wishes to Libby, Darren, Jackie, Paul and Roy who are off to the Black Belt Grading on Sunday.. You’ll storm it guys!

Human powered flight is difficult enough as it is.  Trying to look dangerous and lethal at the same time only compounds that difficulty.  Combining both elements whilst two of your colleagues look on, sniggering and making tinkerbell-like-fluttering motions make the task nigh on impossible!

I think I may have talked myself into a slight corner with, and I’m not entirely sure how, the aforementioned ninja based human flight having an unholy alliance with a kilt.  I believe it may have coincided with a dare.. and very possibly a double-dare.

Time to think of something, sharpish!

..and for those of you wondering, this is how you take flight karate stylee;

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I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination.  Your imagination would have to be somewhat cosmic in its magnitude and more perverse than I would generally give you credit for; and yet me + morning would still not figure… I may want to talk to you about other things if the previous magnitude/perverseness *is* to be credited to you, but I wander somewhat from the main thrust of this little postette…

..I hate mornings!

So to have to swing my body up from the horizontal to something that faintly resembled the vertical at an hour that my brain hasn’t even begun to register in its 40 odd years of registering, means that something is afoot.

Karate tournament day!

Quite why I keep on going is not entirely clear to me.  I inevitably come back with a myriad of injuries; broken fingers, thumbs, toes and more bruises than an upset apple cart.  Add to that the shockingly quick exit from any bout that I stumble into, and get carried out from, and you begin to understand why friends and family all ask, what I hinted to at the beginning of this paragraph;

“Why do you keep going?  You’re rubbish!”

To be honest it’s probably because I am SO bad at this tournament malarkey that makes me want to keep on going back, that and because it is such a huge amount of fun!  We all need to stretch ourselves, to get that knot of fear in your stomach as you realise that your names just been called and you are now expected to either complete a complex sequence of moves in front of a room full of critical eyes OR be faced against someone whose trouser-holding-up-device is several shades darker than yours and has a somewhat alarming glint in their eye as they stare back at you!

Tongue suddenly dries up and attaches to the roof of the mouth, vision tunnels, orifices pucker up and you step into the ring…

That said, what made this tournament all the more exciting was the number of my students, both past and present, who were also attending.  To be able to see them take those first nervous steps and be there to cheer them on as they go through the exact same emotions *and* do better than I was able to do was way WAY more rewarding!  Not all of them got medals, and that didn’t matter, but a large amount of them did… and some of them even managed faux precious metals that I haven’t achieved as yet!

Proud much? Oh yeah!

..Of course, as the title kinda suggests, one thing does tend to follow the other.  Fortunately the “fall” was rather more literal than philosophical, and even more fortunate wasn’t captured on any photographic device for later evidence.  Team Kumite is a roller-coaster of a ride and doesn’t tend to allow you to blink let alone prepare yourself for the onslaught, and this particular team kumite was producing more injuries than the rest of the tournament put together!

I don’t think I have to dwell on my literal downfall;  suffice to say my opponents sweep was excellent, the crunching of my already broken toe was a nice touch, and the kick to the chest allows those colleagues who didn’t attend to ask; “how the f**k did you get a bruise THERE?!”… I think I’d feel cheated if I didn’t come away from these events without some form of injury that didn’t persist for at least a week… or four!

Oh, and of course I couldn’t let it slide that number one son managed to get his first medal too!  Proud parent and all that

It doesn’t matter how many karate lessons you take, the grade of your belt, the years of practise, blood, sweat n tears invested, extracted and demanded by your Sensei.. or even the years of accumulated experience gained through 40 years of what life has thrown at you.  Nothing really quite prepares you for being attacked by a stationary pillar!

There was no attempted block, or retaliatory strike, as the aforementioned stationary pillar maliciously jumped out at me whilst I was looking elsewhere… the “KYAI” was also absent, although it was replaced with a kind of muffled “Gnnfff!” noise.

I now have a slightly sore head, a bruised arse (whence I landed), a cheezy look on my face and I’m thinking about taking my pride to A&E.

A reconstruction follows…

Also, if I do get a facial bruise, and Sensei asks anyone; I was attacked by 10 or 20 ninjas… or Sarah and her phantom belly button! (in joke, but once she reads this the outcome will be the same as 10-20 ninjas).

*sigh*