Drawing Breath

The weekend was a fascinating one at the Phoenix Aikido Club, with a course given by Sensei William Smith and other senior instructors from his Dojo.

Sensei Smith is one of the most senior Aikidoka in the UK, the Principal Instructor and Technical Director of the United Kingdom Aikikai, and it was a pleasure to watch him in action. Although he is still recovering from a serious chest infection, and is obviously not yet back to full fitness, the strength and speed of his demonstrations was wonderful. As well as a powerful and skilled practitioner, he is also an excellent teacher, full of generosity, humour and humility. Despite the very martial bias of his techniques, he shows infinite patience and tremendous care with all his students.

For me, attending the course was something of a minor personal triumph, as I managed the full four hours on the mat on Saturday without any major difficulty (though I was falling asleep in front of the TV by 10pm). By the end of the two and a half hour session on Sunday my knees where extremely sore, but not unbearably so, and I am confident that I will be back on the mat for the Tuesday class as usual. The gain was certainly worth the pain though, as Sensei Smith has given me plenty to think about. I am looking forward to attempting to incorporate some tiny fragments of his knowledge into my own technique.

I also had the good fortune to be asked to Uke for Sensei Philip Smith, which was in equal measure exciting and nerve wracking. Hopefully I didn’t do too bad a job.

At the end of the course, Sensei Smith gave a very touching tribute to our late Sensei Tom Moss. He praised Tom’s wife Barbara for her continued commitment to the club, and for the fantastic job she has done in maintaining the quality of the teaching since Tom’s untimely death. As Sensei Smith pointed out, many clubs loose their way when their founder passes, so the quality of the teachers and students at the Phoenix Dojo is a continuing testament to the care and generosity that where the core of Tom’s teaching.

All in all, a wonderful weekend.

In December last year, Civil Partnerships became law in the UK. Gay and lesbian characters and relationships have been a part of mainstream UK soap operas for nearly 20 years. So why do we still have newspapers digging through phone records to expose Simon Hughes’ past gay relationships? He is not married. He is not [buying sex from rent boys](Mark Oaten). So why the hell is this news? Admittedly Hughes hasn’t helped his cause by denying his homosexuality in the recent past, but given the furore that his “outing” has raised, I can see why he wanted to try and keep it to himself:

I believe that people have a right to a private life, providing that their private life does not impinge upon their public responsibilities.

I have always maintained that someone’s sexual orientation should not be a barrier to public life in modern Britain.

I strongly believe that people should have a right to personal privacy.

I do not believe that anything that I have done has impinged upon my capacity to serve my constituents or fulfil any of the roles that I have sought, undertaken or am seeking for the future.

Well Mr Hughes, it’s a nice idea, but I think your experiences over the last few days just go to show that, sadly, this is not the case.

In about September last year, I made the the decision to attempt my 1st Kyu (Brown Belt) in March. Since then, I have been wilfully ignoring the list of required techniques, working on the principle that, come 12th March, I’ll either know them or I won’t. However, 4 months have gone by, and suddenly 12th March doesn’t seem that far away, so I decided to have a look at the syllabus and see exactly what need to know (if you want to know more about the specific techniques, try this Aikido Dictionary):

Tachiwaza (Standing Techniques)

• Ryotedori, Shomenuchi, Ushiro ryote kubidori

  • Kokyunage
  • Koshinage
  • Aikinage
  • Aikiotoshi

• Yokomenuchi

  • Iriminage
    • Inner positive,
    • Outer positive,
    • Inner negative,
    • Inner positive

• Shomenuchi, Ushiro ryote kubidori (failed Ikkyo kata)

  • Hijigaeshi
  • Jujigarame
  • Hijishime
  • Tenbinnage
  • Sumiotoshi
  • Aikinage
  • Aikiotoshi

• Any attack

  • Kotegaeshi
  • Kaitennage
  • Nikyo
  • Sankyo
  • Yonkyo

Suwariwasa (Seated technique)

• Gyaku katatedori
  • Ikkyo
  • Nikyo
  • Sankyo
  • Yonkyo
  • Gokyo

Hamni handachi waza (Seated against standing attack)

• Shomenuchi
  • Shihonage
  • Kotegaeshi
  • Iriminage
  • Tenchinage
  • Kaitennage

Jo-dori (Unarmed defense against staff attack)

• 3 techniques

Tachi-dori (Unarmed defense against sword attack)

• 4 techniques

Kata (Preset form)

• Shihonage
• Tenchinage
• Ikkyo
• Jo

Two holding one

• 2 techniques

Other techniques

• Five techniques of your own choice
• Techniques from previous gradings

Randori

• Two persons attack

So, the car crash that is Pete Burns bragged that the coat he has been flouncing around in on Celebrity Big Brother was made from the fur of the endangered gorilla.

The police subsequently seized the coat, and the Natural History Museum have found that it is in fact made from the hides of colobus monkeys. The police have passed a file on the case to the Crown Prosecution Service. Good. I hope the unrepentant Burns gets stitched up like a kipper. Idiot.

The advanced class at the Phoenix Aikido Club was a tough one last night. The training wasn’t especially physical, and the techniques where mostly things that I have done many times before. But one of the things I’m starting to realise as I advance through the grades is how much I have left to learn, and that I will never really master any of the techniques, however long I train.

This aspect of Aikido (and I would guess it applies to other martial arts too) is by turns the most frustrating and rewarding aspect of training. The technique that stood out last night was Katate Dori Shiho Nage. At the Phoenix Dojo, this technique is required for the second grading (yellow), so I have been studying it for years, but I was really struck by the infinite variation contained within that one move. I think I would have been happy if we had studied that move all night, and still have found new things each time.

The most important thing for me at the moment is to relax more. Even though I know that being relaxed makes Aikido more effective, I still find myself using too much strength, especially in moves like Shiho Nage, where my height gives me a huge physical advantage. With my brown belt grading only two months away, I need to put as much time in as possible on the mat, so that the moves become more natural and I can focus on relaxing and controlling my breathing.

And I still have at least two Katas to learn before the grading!

I recently found out about sitescore, an automated tool for testing the features, design and accessibility of a web site. I decided to submit my portfolio site for analysis, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it fared quite well, with an initial score of 8.5 out of 10.

If you would like to help improve my overall rating, you can do so by adding your vote. If you are feeling very generous, you could even put a link to Drawing Business on your own site. I will be happy to consider a reciprocal link on Drawing Business or on this blog if you do. If you do add a link, be sure to let me know.

At Aikiko on Thursday night, Sensei Brian brought in his antique Katana and a large stack of old newspapers. Each of us then attempted to cut sheets of newspaper, held taught by two brave volunteers, cleanly in half.

Simple though it may sound, it turned out to be extremely difficult. The best I managed was a clean cut, about 4 inches long, half way down a sheet. The rest I just ripped, or tore from the grip of the people holding the paper. So, even though I can generate a strong cutting action with a boken, I am clearly not drawing back the blade at the end of the strike to generate a slicing action.

I also need to work at using less strength when I strike. As Sensei Brian demonstrated, the key to a clean cut is to allow the weight and motion of the blade do the work, rather than trying to use muscle power. Once again, as in almost every aspect of Aikido, I find that technique is far more important than physical strength.

If you are one of the many so-called Search Engine Optimisation specialists who keep posting spam on my blog, please stop wasting your time.

You keep trying to boost your client’s search engine rankings by leaving fake comments full of links in older posts on this site. It really is pointless, as these comments get deleted immediately. No moderation is required on my behalf, and there is no chance of your efforts ever making it onto the site. All you are doing is polluting my mailbox with notifications that your comment has been deleted, and getting your client’s site URL added to an internet-wide blacklist.

So just stop it.

Today is the official launch of the latest version of my cartoon illustration web site. This is a really big redesign; I have completely restructured the entire site, and thrown away a lot of superfluous content.

I also have a completely new portfolio, using the open source Gallery software. This has allowed me to arrange my illustrations much more logically into smaller albums, which should make older work more accessible.

Please take a look at the new site, and let me know what you think in the comments, the feedback forum, or by contacting me.

If you use the OS X calendar application iCal, and are a member of the Phoenix Aikido Club, I have transferred the Phoenix event calendar to iCal. You can view the published calendar, or if you are on OS X you can subscribe directly.

If you subscribe to the calendar, you can set the refresh interval to keep it up to date (once a week should be more than enough). I will do my best to keep it in sync with the Phoenix calendar, but if in doubt refer to the Phoenix site directly.