Going up a day late because of technical difficulties.
The last day in London and I nerd out in the Wallace Collection before heading off and hanging with Tempus Fugitives.
Tempus Fugitive instructors are experts at combining the physical exercise and coordination of fencing with the history of social credit systems in society and how it influenced the development of fencers.
Today I visit the V&A for a real treat. Handling the sources and knowing that these were penned (or at the very least, they were commissioned to be made by) the old masters is a wonderful and humbling experience.
I then visited Asante Lawla who teaches Shastar Vidya, an Indian weapons based martial art.
Disclaimer: I actually really like Filipo Vadi as a source, but I can’t let anyone else know that.
I travelled to the resting site of William Marshal at Temple Church. Marshal was a knight who won fame in tournaments, fought a war against Henry II before serving him, travelled to Jerusalem, oversaw the signing of the Magna Carta and defended England against a French invasion in his seventies, by riding into battle at Lincoln.
I continue my week in the footsteps of the old masters by travelling to train with other instructors. Checking out the British Museum and all the cool stuff we nicked from other cultures. I then visit Schola Gladatoria run by Matt Easton who are one of the most well known HEMA groups in Britain, if not the world.
Let’s go and fight London.
Hey everybody, I realize it’s been a long time since I’ve made one of these videos, but I haven’t really been inspired by anything. I’ve been focusing more on teaching and getting involved in other classes and things like that. It’s really helped me as a teacher and as a fencer to investigate the ways in which other teachers teach. And normally, the only opportunities I get to do this are when I go to places like Dijon, like Fight Camp and others, where there are workshops being run by other instructors.
Hey guys, I’m back from the Féile na Gaiscígh event run by the Dublin HEMA club where we met up with our good friends the Cork Blademasters and Emmet Byrne from Ravenheart forge – I’ll put the links to those guys below. When I got back I was just inundated with messages and comments about “How good would Gandalf really be in a fight?”
Well… Yeah. Who’s saying they can’t?
“No woman can fight with a sword. Zero women can fight with a sword. And what I mean by that is: in a situation where you are fighting men who are used to fighting with swords you are going to get killed if you are a woman fighting with a sword, 100% of the time.”
– Andrew Klavan/Klaven
Oh.
One of my favourite TV series is Sharpe based on a series of book by Bernard Cornwall about a British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars who rises through the ranks. There’s a great scene in an episode called Sharpe’s Revenge when Shapre has a rematch with a Captain after getting soundly beaten by him in a fencing hall. In the …
Recently, I was sparring against someone I had never fought before. At first, the fight went fairly well. I was landing a good number of hits both at good measure and, when things got heated and it came down to Zogho/Giocco Stretto, I was able to make some clean pommel strikes. My opponent was an interesting guy. He laughed like …