Second of the lessons.

Ok it's still going to take a while to get used to the fact that I'm teaching and that despite my feelings of being unprepared and all of that, I certainly have a long-term vision and structure to enable that. It's not quite how I envisioned using bits of my degree, but even in these two short hours I can see that it's working. Little and regular is a demanding structure to work with, arguably it's one of the better ways to help things but it requires a particular type of repetition. At the moment I'm trying to drill in principles, how and why certain things happen. Distance, distance, distance... controlling the blade. Then a space for free assimilation at the end of the session. It's a Piaget type thingy, works on a building block idea and basically goes "introduce new idea, relate it to old ideas, look for and reinforce complimentary points between them, let person find a way to slot it into their knowledge" I would like to bring in some muscle reading soon- a drill to show exactly how much information you give when your blade is in contact with your opponent's. I'm going to have to play with that idea to find a solid demonstration, the stuff I know is all based around finding a hidden object in a theatre. Something will work and can be tied into telegraphing. There are other things that you notice while teaching.. my esteemed and honourable maestro is... well... not that good at capitalising on his stingere and since we usually spar in the park and I only get to react to the attacks rather than analyse them, I haven't been able to see his exact problem. Well. There's these little things you pick up and I probably got this concept from someone else, I don't claim it for my own. (I consider my hotch-potch learning and attempts at vague familiarity with any school/style I can encounter to be historically and culturally accurate. And I am willing to deconstruct the London based texts to explain why that is the case)... Right, first of all, I'll have to explain the stringere- it's the method of safely stepping into distance and controlling their blade. It's a subtle thing where you "engage" the top third of their sword with the middle third of yours, more or less. Your thrust from this position should always put a stronger part of your blade against a weaker part of theirs...(unless they go really high, then you can disengage and cut to the leg, step in and do stuff... or thingies- just watch for the cut to your head. But I digress.) So, my esteemed and honourable maestro was positioning the blade right, but somehow never actually managing to keep control through the thrust. His blade was basically seeking the strong of his opponents... which is a bad move. The best and shortest way for a thrust from this position is to turn around the axis of your stringere and plough forwards. Thinking of it in that way and having you dragged forward by that point seems to produce the natural body mechanics for a 'perfect' lunge. From there, driving the point around the locus of the stringere then builds on the point control (another weakness) because subtle wrist movements are what's needed to change the direction of the point. (knuckles up, knuckles down, inward and so-on) As for myself, I'm aware that I'm teaching rapier to longsworders. Again- historically and culturally accurate- there are certain gaps in my knowledge about techniques recommended by Swetnam which are aimed at longsworders and due to their typical mistakes (finding themselves on the wrong foot, for example) I really want to understand halfswording and how it applies to the rapier. It's a good way to make myself distinct from non-HEMA stuff while we sort out the issues with daggers. I think there's a load of beautiful techniques and concepts in there which are barely explained and need to be felt to be understood. I think it's also got a place within Swetnam's anti-staff ward (a crossed guard, with the dagger side adding extra strength to resist the blows) And.. well, I'd love to see it turn up in competition. This ties back into my schema based concept for the lessons, describing a kind of conceptual lego set then seeing what people make from that. I'm also aware that I want to get on to teaching the rapier and dagger stuff for no other reason than I find it very, very fun. It's a marvellous fight and it brings in so many questions. Possibly too many, which is why I wonder if the books suggesting that rapier and dagger is for the beginner and single rapier for the experts were written by people in a hurry to create safe opponents.

Wallace collection's new exhibition.

Some things are bittersweet and the exhibition downstairs at the Wallace is one of those bittersweet things. My main criticism about it is... well, it's too small. This is not to say that it's a bad exhibition- in fact, exactly the opposite. The aim of the exhibition is to outline the relationship between Europe and its swords. Demonstrating that fashion and violence are intermingled and even the most jeweled and poncy swords are fatal. I would like to have seen a few more common swords, and.. well.. I guess just a lot more of the exhibition. It is well worth going just for the sword porn. Lots of rapiers, one basket hilt sword and a brief outline of the previous eras of swordiness. However, the greatest part is being able to seeing some of the original manuscripts. It helps add a bit of weight to the academic aspect of what we do- most of us may be working from scans found on the internet but it helps to remember that these are real books, written centuries ago. They have the three oldest known books on fighting- the I.33, and two of the German longsword things (I think, sorry but that's not my field of interest) The other books- they have a Saviolo and a Silver, Thibault (with a square of death by the entrance), a couple of things that I recognize from Hutton's "Old Masters" but couldn't tell you who they were now. It was incredibly frustrating being that close to such important books and unable to look through them- even though most of them are in foreign and I wouldn't be able to understand anything beyond how pretty the pictures are and what these books mean for a contextual understanding of historical events. If you can plan your visit to coincide with a talk by Mr Capwell, I heartily suggest you do. Maybe en mass so that the talk can lean more along the lines of fighting rather than fashion. Oh, and did I mention that this is a free exhibition in the heart of London. http://www.wallacecollection.org/collections/exhibition/93 In short- great exhibition, tonnes of sword porn and given the wealth and interest of what is on display, it must have been a nightmare trying to decide what to leave out.

Silver and the Rapier.

As I'm sure I've stated before, my introduction to HEMA was through Paradoxes of Defence and it would be foolish to pretend that bias and language of understanding isn't my default setting when working on concepts. While I'm prepping for the class (and all that entails) I'm trying to throw my net a bit wider so I can avoid tunnel vision and see how concepts relate to each other. I don't believe that there's one ultimate fighting system (unless you count "whatever keeps you intact") and what is devastating in one pair of hands can be useless in others. This means that rote based plays have a limited appeal me- they're good for getting the grasp of a concept but beyond that, it's quite artificial. Once the basic moves are in, you need to work on feints and getting the feel of them, and especially on not knowing if something is going to be a feint or not. (anyway... I digress) So, I've picked up Silver again, to see if I can find some kind of framing device for my thoughts and I think there's a decent amount of room for "why he said this about the rapier, and why it's wrong". After all, how the methods and techniques interact is a valuable point of HEMA- London being as cosmopolitan as it is/was/will forever be means that you were likely to meet other schools and fight against different styles. Which means there's a lot of influence and mixing of ideas and concepts. Swetnam advises against being cocky if you see a sloppy guard- simply because of the variations in schools. It may be a sure guard that you are unfamiliar with and you should hold judgement unless you really know your lines of attack. Which comes back to the "what Silver said" idea. I should compile all his rantings about the schools of the rapier, read what he says and compare it to the other sources. Ending with what I suspect will turn out to "and this is why Swetnam says do this"

Well, it's getting real.

I know this is the inevitable outcome of working on my own interpretation and a necessary part of proving my work, but.. well, I'll be honest, this isn't the bit I've been looking forward to. It's an annoying paradox that seems to be part of who I am. I follow the path least travelled and then I have to report my findings so I can bring people to see the cool things I've found. I am a natural teacher, I know this simply because that has been the role that I've fallen into throughout my life. I was teaching sailing before I'd sat my GCSEs, my last job involved an awful lot of tuition on new systems and creating knowledge base articles and suchlike... But well. I don't mind being an authority on a small scale, where I can be challenged and caught when I go off on a tangent before the basics are understood and where I can constantly adjust and change my style in reaction to an individual. Standing up in front of a crowd and doing it? Well, at the moment it's not exactly on my bucket-list. The damn thing is looming out of the mist like an iceberg and the only way to avoid it is to give up on something I enjoy. So... bollocks to that. Fortunately I've got a chance to get my hand in, thanks to the hard work of one of the scrappers, we've got a new venue, a night dedicated to rapier and dagger, and the old hands will be turning up for "lessons" with the potential for a few newbies. I have a healthy doubt about my abilities. I know the subject, I've done a lot of work on interpreting the book and I've managed to turn it into something that appears to work for me. I will get questions that stump me and I will get situations that require me to rethink my interpretation. I guess it's this: I'm not an authority... yet.