Invisible katana

It's been a strange weekend.

The weather has been all over the place for one thing - frost, snow, sleet, hail and periods of glorious sunshine and blue skies. I also felt the warning tickle of a sore throat and incipient cold, which was the last thing that I needed. I kept dosed up, and made it through the last practice session at the dojo with no major problems, but I was ready for a snooze on Saturday afternoon.

I dodged the snow showers and took the dog for a walk, before settling down to watch Doctor Who. Good fun, I think, although there was a little too much comic business at the start of the episode and the monsters were silly rather than scary, but it has got me in the mood for what looks like a good historical story next week. I fell asleep on the sofa after tea though, and went to bed for a slightly restless night of fever dreams.

Sunday was more of the same really, watching the clock until it was time to set off for the grading, driving along with large snow flakes swirling down from the sky. The roads were a bit slippery where the grit had been washed away by earlier melting snow that had then frozen, and I noticed the traction control kicking in once or twice going up the hill.

The dojo was busy, with a junior grading session followed by quite a few seniors doing kata and kobudo gradings. It was difficult to find space on the mat to practice, so Rachel and I had to resort to using imaginary katanas, and of course I couldn't resist saying "I can has invisible katana - I is lol samurai".

After demonstrating our two decorative cord knots, it didn't take long before we were called up to grade. It felt a bit scrappy, partly because we were using plain bokkens rather than the swords that we had been practicing with, and the sensei asked for a different form of the formal rei shiki bowing ceremony than we were used to, but the jitsu techniques and defences all went well and allowed us to show a bit of improvisation in different ways of finishing off a downed opponent.

In the end we all passed with credit, which is something to be proud of on a complex syllabus like sword, and Rachel is also to be congratulated on getting an honour grade on her ju-jitusu kata.

Level two weapons next - hurrah!