Tom Hume

It's a little personal anniversary for me today - exactly 10 years since I started practicing Aikido.

At my age that still feels like a long time, and it's passed frighteningly fast. What's also strange is how different my life is now to then. I can't think of many things in my life that have lasted more than 10 years: no employment, no educational establishment, no relationship. The only things that spring to mind are family, a clutch of treasured friendships, and general geekiness.

10 years isn't a long time in Aikido terms - my instructors have more than 30 each under their belts, and still emphasise how much they have to learn. I hope I've been quite careful not to bang on about it here (or elsewhere), but I've been promising myself that once I got to this point I'd give myself license to talk about analogies I see between this stuff and the other things I do. I think there are commonalities between all sorts of craft and I'm sure that if I were a musician I'd see them there; it just so happens that the two things I've done most deeply are software development and aikido. Be warned: I might start writing about them here.

(Mmm, software development and martial arts. Why don't I get invited to more parties?)

And on a side-note, this also marks a personal best in procrastination. One of those little jobs I've been meaning to "get around to any day now" - for TEN BLOODY YEARS - is setting up a direct debit to pay for my classes. I have to do it now... or hmm, maybe leave it another 10...

A huge thankyou to Tom and Maria Helsby, and everyone at Airenjuku Brighton who's put up with me over the last decade. Now, mouth shut, hands open...

A lovely Easter weekend:

• 4 days of lie-ins, catching up on sleep I'd bartered away over the first 3 months of 2008;
• 3 films - Invasion, Rendition, and Cloverfield - and I found something to enjoy in each of them;
• 2 and a half books read: finally finished Bruce Chatwins Songlines (which was absolutely fantastic), Presentation Zen, and started on The Player of Games (to my shame, the first Culture novel I've read);
• 1 tech sabbath: I switched off my mobile and laptop for Sunday, and kept them switched off. It felt horrific for the first 12 hours, lovely for the second 12 :)

All that plus a night out with the Good Doctor, Dangermouse Dave's birthday bash and a succession of meals and cake.

So now I'm rested and relaxed - a good thing, with a busy few weeks ahead: our fortnightly planning day on Wednesday followed by a Girl Geek Dinner, Mobile Internet in Berlin the following week, Over The Air in London the Friday after I return, the first "Chatham House" software meet the following week and a trip to Airenjuku London (mob-handed, I suspect) to say au revoir to Chris on the 12th April...

If you're in Brighton and looking to try something a little different, you could do worse than head along to one of Mark's taster classes for Holistics. Mark's a good friend of mine and has combined elements of Aikido (from which I know him) with all sorts of other stuff into an unusual melange - and he's doing first the class for free, at various venues across Brighton.

2008 is certainly kicking lots of new sand in my face; with Tom lending moral support to Mark's new venture, I've been taking the Tuesday classes at our aikido dojo. When I first started training I kept a diary online (much of which was lost in the Great Hard Disc Crash of 2005 - and may yet be restored); I may end up doing a similar thing for a little while now.

Whilst I've taken two classes so far (and they've both been rather small, with 2 or 3 students each), but a couple of things have stood out for me:

1. I have a sudden appreciation for how much I daydream or "tune out" when I'm normally training; in the classes I take, this isn't an option, and I really felt the additional attention I was giving it. The first time around the difference was striking, by the second it wasn't such a problem. But still: I've been spending far too much time asleep and am kicking myself (ineptly);
2. Having 3 other people in white pajamas copy your every move is a bit surreal. We were stretching this last week, and I became suddenly aware that, as I moved from rotating my left ankle to concentrating on my right, 3 others were doing the same. It's slightly sinister...

As for what we've been doing: really simple stuff. 20 minutes of makko ho stretching, a few warmups, and then taking a single idea and seeing how it's applied in a few of the simplest techniques. So the first class was looking at the circular kokyu arm-shape in ikkyo, iriminage, shihonage and suwari waza kokyu ho; in the second we went through the same set of techniques but concentrating on ukemi and stretching.

I loved these distinguishing features of the Japanese "ancient swimming art":

1. There must be beauty as well as effectiveness in the form of swimming.
   
2. There is no competing with others in speed.
   
3. You should swim quickly, but you should never be tired when you reach land.

If those can't be applied to any human endeavour (strive for elegance, compete with yourself, don't exhaust yourself) I'm a banana. Along similar lines I can recommend reading The Wheelwright's Shop, an excellent treatise on craftmanship in the late 19th century which a friend recommended to me a while back...

At Aikido last night, Tom came out with a great Rumi quote which I've spent much of this morning trying to remember: "There is a field beyond right and wrong. I'll meet you there."

Martial Artists' Moves Revealed in "Fight Science" Lab: "We took the dummy and put in sensors that would be more appropriate for the application of martial artists."

I had fun this weekend in Switzerland - travelling out there for an aikido course with Patrick Cassidy and Miles Kessler, being held by the Aikido Montreux dojo.

We got off to a bad start. Despite getting up at 5:30am I arrived at Brighton station after our planned train left. Tom and Carl were there waiting for me and we hopped onto the next train... which got us into Gatwick around 20 minutes before the flight left. So there was much running across the airport and out to the gate - we *just* made it in time.

Arriving in Geneva, we wandered around the town a little, soaking in the sights, grabbing coffee, a beer and some food in the Old Town and then heading to a local park to grab half an hours kip. A 50 minute train journey later and we were in Cully, the small town by the side of Lake Geneva, for the first evenings training. Miles having been delayed due to travel problems, Patrick took the first class - but they shared the training throughout the rest of the weekend.

I only have scratchy notes - and an even scratchier memory - of what we learned in class:

• Patrick's talk on the subject of "imagine a life without an enemy" really resonated. Interesting to see how a change in attitude towards a grab can affect uke (in the controlled environment of the dojo at least - it wasn't suggested as a realistic response to an attack In Real Life).
• An hour or so's class on striking, emphasising punching in a relaxed and responsive manner.
• Solo practice (something I'd not seen much of until recently when we were practicing the kata for kaitenage solo, back in Airenjuku), blending into partner practice in a crowded dojo whenever a bell was rung. Really good fun and a great way to get to slip into training with partners without thinking about it.
• Sword work, especially exploring the connection with the tip of the sword, and leading/following practice - "sticking swords" as it was christened.
• Practicing rolling around one another (on a horizontal plane as opposed to over the floor). Tom (Helsby) has talked about this before, but we actually tried it, and it's interesting - there's a tendency to lose contact or slip.
• Peter Ralston style "4 corner" exercises - taking pressure on the shoulder (kata dori) into a throw, or into a coming-from-underneath ikkyo using a shoulder roll, which I really liked (even if I couldn't really do it).
• Visualisations involving orbiting planets - a bit 'out there' for me but none the less valid I suspect ;)

...and much more, plus fondue-waza at a lovely restaurant overlooking the lake, kipping on the mats at Aikido Montreux (a charming and hospitable dojo if ever there was one), some excellent gradings, and of course, the view from Gabo (one of the largest, sternest, and nicest Germans I've ever met) that "the best aphrodisiac is your best friends girlfriend".

Switzerland was absolutely beautiful - idyllic is the word for it. I can't imagine a nicer place to train than by the lakeside in the controlled climate of Montreux. Mountains constantly lurking in the background, clean air, open space, and a pile of horribly friendly people. I Shall Return...

...though not by travelling via Heathrow next time. We got back in around 10, but it took us 3.5 hours to get back to Brighton via a combination of buses, overland trains, and delayed services. Grr.

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja:

"Q: Who is Dr. McNinja?

A: Dr. McNinja is a doctor who is also a ninja."

A lovely video of Gozo Shioda.