Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 16:55:47 +0000
From: Mike ? <ecosamurai@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: A quick review was:Re: Excelent weekend
First let me start by saying a HUGE thanks to Justin for all his hard
work and secondly let me say that Simon Watkins must immediately go
and have plastic surgery because he looks nothing like he was supposed
to ;o)
The weekend started for me when Karlo Breuer and Tony Crawford came
and picked me up on their way from Stanstead (cheers guys!).
Unfortunately my directions were prob a bit crap because they missed
the turning and had to phone me to find where I was, which was really
unfortunate because just at that moment a girl I used to be madly in
love with and haven't seen for about 3/4 years walked out of the
station and I couldn't talk to her 'cos I was on the phone to karl and
couldn't leave the two of them driving round the north circular all
night just 'cos I wanted to chat up some girl :o)
When we got there we arrived half way through the bowling, shortly
thereafter James Baldwin turned up and said: anyone know how to do
shihonage? James was too tall to be James though so I didn't recognise
him from the pictures in my head.
Eventually we started next morning, Jack Poole Sensei kicked things
off with some nice stuff which I must confess I don't really reacll
too well because I have a memory like a sieve. But he does have a
funky little O Sensei style beard if thats any consolation.
Next up was Mike Cummins with some really cool jo work, done with the
short end of the jo, my thumbs are still recovering from being caught
up in some nice twists. When I first met Mike I didn't recognise him
as he wasn't supposed ot have a beard.
I've forgotten the exact orde now as a few last minute changes
happened, but we saw some nice yoshinkan kamae stuff from Justin, I
still have no idea exactly what we did, I didn't know at the time and
i don't know now...So, my right foot goes here and my left hand does
this and...s**t I've forgotten it already. What was it again?
We also had James doing his Ki-wee bit, I got roped into being an uke
as there were only James and myself there representing the Ki-wees,
hope I did ok on that one James ;o)
Karl Breuer did some lovely soft flowing aikikai stuff for us, which I
could't get into my head either, but it was fun. A lovely shiatsu
class follwed this.
The saturday night party was fun, except that after dinner a lot of
people obviously decided they weren't getting their nmoneys worth and
went back on the may until about midnight. I would have joinded them
but some fool brought a guitar which meant I was compelled to subject
everyones ears to my poor excuses for playing. Hope nobody minded, I
just couldn't help myself, if its got six strings I must play it.
Next day we were treated to Andy Wilbys magic crystal ball of kuzushi,
a theme which tended to get mentioned later by iter instructors with
their own spin, once again reinforcing the fact that its all aikido at
the end of the day.
We had another yoshinkan session and then the tomiki session which
apart from the ki session most resembled the sort of stuff I do (for a
warm up), the knife work used for competition made me feel quite at
home, so thanks for that :o)
Finally we had Giles teaching Hakku Ryu which he had intended to go
through a list of things which made it different from aikido but
apparently other instructors had done all the stuff that he had on his
list so he just showed us a few things which were very
interesting. Cheers Giles. But can you dye your hair blond next time
so i know who you are.
And lastly I shall forever carry away with me two enduring memories
for this weekend:
1- Driving home with Karl and Tony and joking about soem kind of vague
directions they had which said that they should keep going straight
for the river thames. This led to us conjuring up an image of a rental
car full of aikidoka floating down the river, jo's sticking out of the
windows to be used as paddles and someone sitting on the roof keeping
the time of the stroke in japanese 'ICHI! NI!..ICHI! NI!'
and 2, the memory of Simon Watkins fondling my backside during the
shiatsu session is something I doubt I'll ever forget ;o)
oooooohhhhh BABY!
hehehe
Mike Haft
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