Ace Weekend

I’m somewhat knackered now, but what an ace weekend.

Yesterday was the first serious bit of fencing (apart from a bit of a warm up last Monday night) for what seems like ages. Lots of productive drills on the use of compression and riposte, and much unlearning of the instinct to give ground when parrying and keeping your arm straight, that opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities for tactical swordplay. We also had some interesting ideas for picturing the geometry of a fight as overlapping circles or spheres of variable size, which fits in nicely with some of the other visualisations. Yum.

After impressing Rachel and Louisa with my snazzy new leather jacket that Jan bought for me in the sales, I set off for Meadowhall to meet up with Jan, the kids and my Mum and Dad who were visiting for the weekend before jetting off to New Zealand in a couple of weeks time. My dad was looking for a digital camera and plumped for a Canon Powershot in the end, which should do everything that he wants. I set up the software for it on my mum’s laptop, so we’ll have to wait and see how he gets on with it.

Today we pigged out in a big way. A cooked breakfast followed by a Sunday lunch at the local pub and then a very welcome snooze to digest it. In other news, Jamie massacred me in a multiplayer game of ‘Brothers in Arms’ where we fighting over a crossroads in the shell torn landscape of Normandy, I still bought 200 turnips off Sow Joan despite losing a shed load of bells in a stalk market crash last week and the new TV version of Terry Pratchett’s Johnny and the Bomb was really, fantasticly good.

Th’ th’ th’ that’s all folks!