Assumptions.

I guess this is the place to start- and it's one of the hardest since I'm trying to list the things that I take for granted. I think I'll try to stick to the ones which don't quite come into "being a good fighter. That will be a different topic"

"All cuts are fatal". This isn't meant as in "that nick in your arm will kill you". However the gash will slow you down and make it much easier for a nastier blow to land. Being stabbed/cut hurts and pain is distracting. Therefore- don't get hit.

"If you survive, you don't want to be hanged". I think this is a peculiarly Swetnam trait. Somewhere around then, duelling had been outlawed in the city and this brings a more cautious attitude to the fight. If you did some of the capoferro techniques involving aiming at the right eye- you could be hauled up in front of the beak on a murder charge. So the legality of duelling has shaped the fight.

"Any hole's a goal" there's no point being picky about your target. If you can give a light cut and remain under cover it's as good as stabbing him through the heart. If a leg is exposed then go for it. Predicting exactly where and how you will hit an opponent is pretentious, egotistical tomfoolery and a bit silly, especially when "passing". If you can make a hole without getting hit- do it.

"Englishmen have a tendency to cut" this is another Swetnam specific, and from my experience this is pretty true. It's only fairly recently that longsword simulators have been safe on the thrust (well, not including feders) and so you'll notice a tendency to cut with most weapons. From behind a rapier, a cut still feels nice and I know I still go for them despite the fact that it would be wiser to thrust. This is also probably something to do with distance control and suchlike. But basically although rapier is primarily a thrusting weapon, it still cuts and people tend to use the cut first.

"Feints must be treated as if they were real" You must, at least cover a feint and a feint should be able to be moved into an attack on that line as well as the line you're trying to open up.

"Don't trust the other person to believe these assumptions" Just because you don't want to be up for murder, it doesn't mean your opponent is thinking that far into the future.

"All swords are sharp pointy things designed to cut and to thrust. Some types are better at one than the other, but they still work both ways." The differences between one handed, complex hilt swords are fairly moot. What works well for a rapier will work, just not quite as well, with a backsword and so on. Throwing these techniques away simply because you're not using the perfect sword for them is a stupid idea. You never know what may come in handy.

These assumptions will shape my interpretation in some ways- for example the shoulder becomes a "vital organ" and a thrust there is, in ways, preferable to a stab in the face, lungs or heart.

I may cover the assumptions that make a good fighter, regardless of weapon and school of thought later. It would certainly be helpful for putting lessons into blocks.

All this umming and ahhing and false starts:

Well. I have been busy, but invisible. As I've mentioned I'm looking at Swetnam, but it's slightly more widespread and wibbly than that. The joys of the written word from an era before editors and spell check mean that my brain has threatened to seep from my ears at some point. It's also required me to have a look at the context of the whole thing. (And lots of going back and forth between chapters in Swetnam as well)

I can now run a competent lesson or three on Swetnam's rapier and dagger. But that's not good enough for me. You see, I like teaching. I like seeing people build on what I have done and create something much greater. I don't really care if I'm a good fighter or not- but I do care if I'm a bad teacher.

What was going to be a simple "pointy bit goes in the other person" exercise has actually bloomed into something much bigger. Not just because he cross references everywhere, but because of the cultural background that he writes from.

One of the key parts of Swetnam seems to be that everyone has their own methods of fighting and how they hold things and, being quite late, his work is a response to other methods. So, it's a matter of getting the details of what he would have seen and what he takes for granted. I'm not a purist when it comes to "the masters". Fighting does not exist in a bubble, especially European styles where everyone has tried to invade, enslave, conqueror and steal from everyone else.

Swetnam is a bit vague in places, which I think is fair- since precision is developed over time and you can't improve if you're dead (which is his basic reasoning behind the naming of his "true guard", it keeps you alive for long enough to become adequate) But without an idea of the threats he would have faced on the street, I cannot be sure of my interpretation. He was writing in early 17th century London. A city chock-full of random nationalities and foreign masters who said that they were the best and in an area where things were proven very quickly and, sometimes, fatally.

So what does this mean for me? I guess it means that I'm going to be working on how rapier and associated sword play occurred on the streets of my city and that I'm having to look into Saviolo as a counterpoint (and maybe a bit of Silver.. but not much).

It's going to be quite complex and a real pain in the arse in places- but my interpretation is going to be shaped by knowledge of his contemporaries. Ignoring the fact that students of Saviolo and Swetnam (and others.. but one step at a time) were in such close proximity means that I'd miss important points and clues given by context. I also suspect that Swetnam was used to teaching people who knew the longsword.. a situation I've found myself in.

If I want to be a good teacher- I have to know this stuff. And if I get this all down properly, I won't be teaching "Rapier and Dagger as described by Swetnam" but "Early 17th century sword play: Rapier and Dagger as it may have been seen on the streets of London." Which I like- after all, one of the reasons I'm doing HEMA rather than some oriental art is because of the cultural relevancy and the way it can bring some aspects of history to life.

I also believe that fighting is heavily defined by both culture and environment and that it is easy to lose this aspect of our understanding when we fight in gym halls and wide, open fields. Or when we talk about the "best" weapon/master/school/blah blah blah. The best? At least nowadays, is the one you like the most.

For me, the rapier makes much more sense as a weapon if you go into the City of London and explore the alleyways that litter the area. The layout hasn't changed much over a few centuries and if you grew up in a place like that, you would not think of a longsword as a valid weapon to carry. You can't use a powerful cutting weapon in a location where any good swing will take out more brickwork than flesh.

Anyway, I believe I'm starting to digress. I'll be trying to keep this updated a bit more- I'll be putting up things about my notes/interpretations and suchlike once I've translated my them into something that may possibly be understood by someone who isn't me... and I've figured out how to present them.

Once they're up- I will welcome constructive criticism. I know I'm missing bits and there are things that I've not stated because they are obvious to me and me alone. And sometimes I'm probably going to be just plain wrong.

I seem to have been quiet for too long.

Do not worry, I haven't turned my back on the arte. It's just that I've been working on something and forgetting to share my frustrations and joys here.

Thanks to the recession I am still.. in-between jobs but I have been keeping busy. However, with the help of the lovely Kindle and my expertise at using specific kinds of software, I've been able to carry around a few manuscripts and comfortably read them. Only English ones I'm afraid- my foreign isn't good enough to work on anything else, and besides they're from my history, my culture and my streets (and my pubs, well at least the ones that survived the Fire).

I am getting more faith in my interpretation as time goes on. I think it will always be a little nerve-racking when you first start testing your studies. It's bad enough with the world of academia when it's only your ego that gets bruised when you're shown to be on completely the wrong path. "I think I've got this right, now try to hit me"

Ok, I'm not betting my life on being right, but it can damn well feel like it sometimes.

I am almost at the point where I'm ready to start sharing my version, I will emphasise that this is my understanding and it's fully open to debate and testing. It will also be revised with other aspects. I am doing what I can to look at contemporaries and I will compare, contrast and integrate whatever is useful.

The Kindle is Evil

Yes, yet another hibernation. It's a bit difficult trying to write about what is a very physical activity when winter forces you to pay for places to practice or to stay inside. A brief update, which will be expanded on in the future.. probably.. I'm now an instructor. Not qualified yet, but I have now taken my first lesson and it went a lot better than I hoped. I'm feeling a bit Groucho Marx about this- being a good teacher is important to me, and for all my fretting, it was far too easy. I must have been doing something wrong, apart from the obvious.

Anyway... I think I've mentioned it before- the HEMA scene has a high concentration of academics, techy people and bookish geeks. It's a bit of a necessity when you've got to hunt down and translate 700 year old writing that may have been lost in the sofa of time. By nature, it's driven by people who are dedicated to rediscovering a dead language. The information has spread by the net and people have digitised the manuscripts.

And now- this is why the Kindle is evil. It blurs the line between book and computer in a brilliant way. It's the good side of the uncanny valley- something that you need to see to be able to understand. It took me weeks to stop laughing at the fact that I wasn't looking at a piece of paper.

With a particularly obscure hobby and some training in the intricacies of OCR and digital text- I'm now starting to get annoyed. This treatise database is full of pictures of books. They are, by necessity, pictures of books. OCR has never been concerned with things as valuable and as wibblywobblytimeywimy as knowledge.

Especially when you come to computer representations of knowledge. For us a picture of a word is as good as the word itself. For a computer it's not. 16th century English fonts are easy to read- they require a glance and an understanding of the context. For a computer, the difference between ff and ss is a few pixels. The differences between sh and fi are a matter of bad scanning. Computers don't understand the difference between "I helped my uncle Jack off a horse" and "I helped my uncle jack off a horse".

I've already converted my lesson notes and index cards to the the right format. Once I've got a good library of drills, I could share those with anyone who asked. Hell, thanks to the text-to-speech stuff, I could probably run a lesson without turning up.

I'd love to be able to search the original texts on the spur of the moment. A question is asked and you can remember the shape of the book as you open it, you know that it's on a left page and about 3/4 to the back. You even remember a very specific sentence or phrase.

Even if it's in colloquial 13th century Italian- You, personally, need to know the difference, not the computer.

The Kindle is evil because it makes what was once utterly impossible into something that is just out of reach. Really- who wouldn't want to be able to walk the streets with a library that could encompass all of space and time? Ok- then you're just going to have to ask yourself where to start reading.

However it means that people can self publish on a much easier level.

Just a quickie

I'm terrible at multitasking. It's really easy to carry conversations across people. Still, thing one that I am not talking about went well. Thing two also went well- it seems I'm being much more mobile in fighting (a long running fault that I have been frustrated with)

Ps. Experimental archeology sounds great fun.

Future Developments:

Something is happening soon. It will be the start of me having a new kind of relationship with HEMA and I don't quite know what that will be or how it will develop. I won't talk about it just yet as we're still working out the details and I'd rather let other people sort out the politics of it all. Besides, in a way, it doesn't involve me. That's not a negative thing, just a simple fact- I'll explain more later.

The one thing I will say about it is that I'm pretty optimistic about what's going on and hopefully it will mean that we forge stronger ties with other groups.

I like seeing HEMA as a community, we are an eclectic lot with a very simple connection (swords are cool), there's so many opportunities for learning and so many people with different focuses and attitudes that it's foolish not to use them. Almost everyone takes a different thing away from it- a sense of history, faith in themselves under pressure, self defence, the dashing swagger of a true swashbuckler, or even just a damn good workout that's infinitely more fun than the gym. And probably hundreds of other things I have forgotten to list.

It is a case of no man is an island. Good, clear, solid communication between groups (not just on instructor level) will benefit us all, even if it just means we get to fight more different people. It can do so much more though, if you know the groups well, you will know their strengths and weaknesses and you will know the way to ask the right questions to the right people.

Fightcamp Summary: The quick one.

One of the 'problems' with Fightcamp is that there is always a lot happening- fighting, learning, chatting with new groups and catching up on the past year with others and there are also things afoot that I will be vague about until things are clear and the new direction is signposted and made all pretty.

With that in mind I am still processing information from the weekend and a more HEMA focused entry will appear later.

Things I have learnt very quickly: Slow motion drills are surprisingly stressful on your body. When something goes wrong there are only a few inches between a scare and a tragedy. Finding a good teacher is more important than finding a weapon you like.

And rain is a great way to kill enthusiasm. It was wet this weekend- not just a bit of rain. I'm English, a bit of rain is as much a part of summer as Pimms. This was biblical stuff, and unpredictable- in fact, if I didn't know better, I'd suspect that we were being used as a front for Immortals and that the storms were a result of the Quickening.