Sash postponed

Well, I didn’t get it today.

It was hard, concentrated work, as the Prof pushed me and Rachel through a series of drills and scansos to test our knowledge and ability. Fatigue was setting in, and combined with assessment nerves, lead to us muffing some stuff that we should have got right – I completely forgot how to do a simple cavatione and misunderstood the requirements for demonstrating guardinare as part of the attack sequence. The parry sequences weren’t flowing as they have been doing during practice recently either.

The free play with off hand weapons went a little better though, although I was really starting to sweat at this point. Wearing a tee-shirt, as well as a polo shirt and my jacket was probably a bit of a mistake, I think. The final test was to demonstrate point control against two opposing targets – fencing masks held by people at either side of the hall, spinning through a 180 degree turn and lunging each time. We had been practicing to score twenty hits in a minute, but today we were pushed for ninety seconds and I was quite pleased to get thirty-nine in that time.

The overall result was that we both fell just short of what we should have achieved, but the good news is that we can work on the problem areas without having to redo the whole test next month and so we have both provisonally passed.

Simon aced his Scholar’s assessment though, pretty much as expected as he has been working well beyond that level for some time now. He did suffer the traditional injury during his assessed free-play, losing a chunk of skin from one of fingers on his left hand, leaving a trail of blood on the way to the first aid kit.

The hall had been double booked for a children’s party, so we had to move into the two smaller rooms for the rest of the afternoon. We still managed to have plenty of fun with single sticks in between munching the huge array of snacks, crisps, pastries, doughnuts and a fabulously alcoholic xmas cake from Rick and Amber. Yum.

Tired now …