Blood and honour

Blood was spilt at the dojo last night.

Ok, so it wasn't exactly a duel to the death, but I did manage to cut my foot by standing on a staple at the side of the mat producing a satisfyingly gory foot print on the mat. I cleaned it up and applied a plaster and all was well. The lesson went well, although I am starting to hit my mental overload point with the different techniques we are learning.

Basic break falls to start with (which I haven't done for over thirty years - gulp) and then some more sword work, beginning with the disarms we learnt last week and moving on to defences from a kneeling position against a drawn sword. Great fun but hard on the knees, and it still seems weird to draw the sword with the true edge uppermost. The dynamics of the katana are very different to the rapier work that we are most familiar with, but we have been able to find some similarities with the cuts in sabre to give us a handle on it.

Today has been busy.

The garage managed to get my car fixed, so I went to pick it up at lunch time. I caught sight of the bill and I must say that I'm glad I'm not paying for it - 1600 squids for a new gearbox, or thereabouts. Ouch. It's nice to get it back though.

It's all change on the A/V front in the house as well. We've finally bit the bullet and ditched Sky - they spent ten minutes trying to make me feel guilty about depriving the children of the cartoon channel and tempting me with the broadband service that I know full well we can't get because our exchange hasn't been upgraded yet, but I eventually got them to cancel it. It's been replaced with a shiny new Topfield freeview PVR - it's going to take a bit of getting used to, with the ability to schedule recordings at the press of a button and pause and rewind live tv. Very nifty. Jan also arranged for a chappy to come round and fit some new aerial cables to the kitchen, the art room and upstairs so we can set up digital tv there as well.

It was also a good excuse to clean up behind the tv, hoovering up that peculiar gunk that seems to accumulate around wires and cables. Ditching the sky box and the aged VCR has also reduced the rats nest of wiring to a more manageable level. Hurrah!

In other news, I've also installed the new Ubuntu Feisty Fox release on the upstairs server as a dual boot option. First impressions are very positive ... more news as it happens!