High life | 7 September 2017

After the heat in Greece, the Alps are cool and green and very comfortable. My sensei Richard Amos is over here and we squeezed two weeks of intensive karate training into three days. Nothing makes me feel better than the sense of total exhaustion after a hard day’s fighting. We do kihon, kata, and then we let fly in kumite. Except that recently I’ve caught him diving, as they call it in the ugly game. Fight like a man, I say, through gritted teeth. He picks up the tempo but my suspicions remain. The sensei (teacher) is taking it easy on the sempai (senior). I hate it but it’s the way of our world, the best one there is, the world of martial arts and of the bushido spirit.

Otherwise it’s been a lousy year, what with Nick Scott, Aleko Goulandris, Alistair Horne, David Beaufort and David Tang all leaving a place that’s becoming cruder and more brutal by the minute.