Black Belt Set Sparring

Three step and two step sparring are described in the P.U.M.A. handbooks but one step isn’t, as it more free-form than three or two step. The following notes show what is expected of students at various grades. For all one step sparring, the attacker should judge the distance by eye. The attacker needs to ensure […]

Sunflowers Planted

My dad has challenged all his kids and grand-kids to grow the tallest sunflower. We had started some off inside, but they didn’t make it. So, this afternoon, we planted some in the back garden. Hopefully, we haven’t left it so late that they won’t have a chance to grow! We also planted lots of […]

Rules of tackling

At Johnathon’s tag rugby session this morning, the coach introduced a bit of contact tackling (some of the players will be playing in the next age group up next season, so need to know about this sort of thing). The coach gave the players three rules of tackling: Eyes on thighs Cheek to cheek Ring […]

Two step sparring

Here are some points about two step sparring that I picked up at today’s session. For the second “set”, where the counter attack is a sliding side elbow strike, it is down to the student to decide if they should step across before sliding. It depends on what position the attacker has ended: is a […]

Blackberries

Lots and lots of blackberries we picked while at Calleva!

No Bowel Cancer!

Today I had a colonoscopy, because of a family history of bowel cancer. The procedure didn’t find any polyps or other indicators of bowel cancer, which is excellent news! One less thing to worry about!

Great retort

A colleague held a door open for me; I jokingly said “Age before beauty, I insist!”. He retorted “Dirt before the broom!”.

Sam’s 21st Birthday

Some pictures of people who were at Sam’s 21st birthday party.

Farsight

Curfew

The local paper reported that the curfew has been lifted; the state of National ‘Safety’ is still in place, though that should be lifted at the start of next month. Never been to a country that had curfews or states of national safety before!