Sword Diplomacy – The Climb #294

Saturday 11^th November 2017

After moaning that I’m feeling a bit burned out you’d think that I’d take a weekend off the swordfighting. That was the original plan and I’d arranged to hang out with a non-swordfighting friend today and just have a bit of a mini adventure. But that fell through and then this opportunity came up.
Years ago, my swordfighting school split. Some went on to create a new school, others stayed and changed the school into a much different beast than it was. I was very much in the background when this happened and so I’m not aware of all the politics. If I had been, I would have probably ignored than anyways.
As a result there’s always been this perceived animosity between those who broke away and those who reinvented. I say perceived as I’ve never noticed it. Was it ever there? I have no idea but I never saw any evidence of it. I very much think it’s a case that everyone thought the other side was pissed off and so things have been a bit distant.
However, progress was made after last year’s Swordfish where we all got together and realised we were all OK with each other. This progressed further this year when at this year’s Swordfish it was decided we should all meet up and – as swordfighters do – stab each other.
And so that’s what we did today. Three of us went to spar with some new people and basically have some fun.
Now if I was sensible, given that it’s Bucklerthon in a week (and my next competition), I would have taken all my kit and done some sword & buckler practise but I only took my rapier kit. However, given that I was feeling very hungover and sword & buckler usually results in a lot of bruises for me…it’s probably for the best.
I picked up a friend and we drove to their training hall where we spent 3 hours sparring with them. They’re all great fencers and in my hungover state I did a good job of being stabbed by all of them (although to be fair to them I probably would have been stabbed even if I wasn’t hungover).
I didn’t fence well and I certainly felt fatigued but that didn’t stop me having fun. When sparring I don’t tend to worry who did better… it’s a chance to just try things and enjoy some fencing.
We all had a great time and hopefully it’s bridged this void that’s existed between the two groups for years. I hope some of them will come to our sparring as it’s always fun to fight new opponents with different backgrounds and techniques. Plus, more practise is always good.
Driving up to Surrey & back via Reading takes a while so by the time I got home it was quite late.
I got some files together for this writing opportunity but I need to take some time to go over them and just make sure they are suitable. I suspect that they are not but I don’t think I have time to write anything especially before tomorrow night.
I was up for playing some World of Warcraft but I’ve now got all my level 100 characters to level 110 so I’m a little stuck as for what to do. Instead, I’d heard a number of friends rave about a TV series on Netflix called Mindhunter and so I checked out two episodes whilst texting a friend.
Overall it’s been a bit of a weird day. I’d not planned to swordfight but ended up doing some diplomacy of a non-existent problem that hopefully paves the way for better times ahead.
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