The 3 day Kar­ate Sum­mer School is over.

It was great fun but the long jour­ney home from the wilds of Bris­tol was hard as my whole body was aching.  Not only from the train­ing, which was tough; uncom­monly tough; in the strong sun­light, but also from sleep­ing sep­ar­ated from the ground by only a thin futon.

The train­ing was of the usual not­ably high stand­ard of DKK Goju and covered weapons, mul­tiple attacker defense, grap­pling, throws, full con­tact and lots and lots of fit­ness.  All this tak­ing place on a large angled piece of grass in the middle of a camp­ing site.  The les­sons were split into bite size chunks of 1 — 2 hours and all were build­ing from the basic “attack & smash” found­a­tions of the style to the more kung-fu like advanced techniques.

And then, at the end of the second day, a spe­cial treat…

The qual­ity of the DKK kar­ateka is exem­pli­fied in the spec­tacle of someone com­plet­ing their 30 man kumite and being awar­ded their 2nd Dan.  Fight­ing 30 men in full con­tact for 1 minute each with only a 2 minute break halfway through is simply incred­ible.  It is a won­der to watch as the emo­tions flow around the area cap­tur­ing fight­ers and observ­ers alike. Whenever the fighter gets put on the ground by a full con­tact kick he just keeps get­ting back up again and again.  No mat­ter how exhausted, battered and tired he returns to his feet.  Even if he is so tired that he has lost the abil­ity to fight back effect­ively, against the ever-fresh oppon­ents, he just keeps going. There is not a dry eye in the house.  Voices are shouted horse as the observ­ers try to give encour­age­ment how­ever there is noth­ing but a Zen-like focus on the face or the fighter.  I have seen 5 of these feats and I still have to hold back the tears as well as pull up my jaw from the floor.

One of the things the 30 man proves is that it is people that make a club and not the tech­niques.  DKK has a bril­liant group ethos, which is care­fully developed through the train­ing by Sen­sei Mul­hol­land (who is an expert at such things) and Sen­sei Lewis (Who has an amaz­ing skill at put­ting people at their ease). The after-hours camp fires, the chats around the tents and the even­ing swim­ming runs all make the exper­i­ence one to truly treas­ure.  I will surely miss it.

I will surely come back if I can.

There is some­thing else I owe DKK.  In Octo­ber Francesca and I were effect­ively in a rut.  I sat down one night and had a good long think about what I wanted from my life.  I real­ised that since leav­ing Jung Do Kwan I had been liv­ing with a large gap in my life that was mak­ing me awfully unhappy.  So I looked around the net and went fish­ing for a new club.  Some­thing old school.  Some­thing tough and effect­ive.  Some­thing that would make a change in me.

If DKK was a fish then it would be a 35lb Pike.

It is a tough but highly skill­ful style, a club full of senior grades who have been train­ing here for 10 years or more (always a very good sign), an instructor able to push you fur­ther than you thought you could go and some excep­tion­ally tal­en­ted fight­ers.  Add the fact that Goju has a long her­it­age and you have the per­fect mar­tial arts club.

I was home.  My mar­riage was soon saved because I basic­ally pulled myself up and out of the rut.  Every pres­sup was for the both of us and every sit­tup was another inch back to the mar­tial artist I once was.  Altough that jour­ney has not fin­ished (does it ever?) I feel great and able to go find a new life as a new man.

Sum­mer School was the cul­min­a­tion of that last 8 months of train­ing and I was very glad to not miss it.  My memor­ies of the place and people will go with me on my travels.

This next bit is not for the squeam­ish though… so click to continue:

I was expect­ing to come back from the event covered in bruises and indeed I have and then some.  I was expect­ing to come back tired and by gum I did.  But I wasn’t expect­ing to find two small arach­nids in super­fam­ily Ixodoidea eat­ing me when I went to have a bath.

Two bloody ticks!

Grrrrrr!

Any ticks is one tick too many, but these two were… well; nasty.  One was munch­ing on my armpit.  That was not so bad and I pulled the little fucker off with a hor­ri­fy­ing crunch­ing sound.  No, it was his friend that caused the real shock.

It was on my balls.

My nuts.

My hacky­sacks.

My joy bags, my ber­ries, my nads, my bol­locks, my cojones, my man­jig­glys’…

On. My. Testicles!

Any­way, bol­lock munch­ing 8 legged insect ver­min aside I had a bril­liant time and very much hope that I will see these people again.  As for the les­sons, I will carry those with me always.

Basho

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