324 and Counting

January 26th, 2012

 

I’m taking a break from Judo for a while. Not permanently, but I need six months or so away from the mat to get the rest of my life in order. However, I not only don’t want six months away from the mat, I literally can’t have it.

 

I weigh 324 pounds.

 

I’ve never been heavier in my life. Not ever. I could, and at one point quite wanted to, talk about why this happened, how it made me feel, what I wanted to do get around it, how upset I was. There’s no point,it’s all pretty much laid out in that sentence. I weigh a cartoon weight. I am the heaviest person I know. I may even be the heaviest person you know.

 

It’s a shitty, unfair, upsetting start and I hate it so much I can’t say . But it’s a start, and the road to losing weight starts, for me, with exercise. I have a geological metabolism, I can actually gain weight by looking at food. It’s ridiculous, it’s a situation I’ve failed utterly to deal with my entire life and it’s one which I’m bored of. Which is why although I’m taking a break from Judo, I’m not taking a break from the martial arts. That sort of explosive, edge of the red line exercise is very good for me and I want, and need, it to continue to be a part of my life. Which is why I came up with the plan, and the plan looks a little something like this: I exercise every second day. Without fail. It doesn’t matter what it is I do, but I do something, for no less than half an hour at a time. Running, walking, fighting in some form, yoga, whatever I can lay my hands on. The first stage is kickboxing, and I went to my first lesson last night, after two weeks of being too stuffed full of cold to go.

 

Or rather, I didn’t. I walked 3.7 miles, I know, thanks to Google maps. I actually walked PAST the building, and had to ask directions from several people who were probably a little frightened by the tall, broad, intense looking dude in the WRITER hoodie asking where the community centre was.

 

I showed up. The class didn’t. Wrong night. I went home, got some food and took some solace in the 3.7 mile walk. But only some, because believe me losing weight is frustrating in a way very little else is. It takes ages, it requires constant vigilance, you start from a position of weakness and live on a thin gossamer thread of success that only ever goes back a week. It takes faith and it takes courage and neither of those are particularly easy to come by. That’s the bad news.

 

The good news, and yes even I can see that there’s good news, is this. I’ve started. The next few months are going to bring kickboxing, Aikido, Yoga, climbing, any and everything is going to get tried and I’ll find ways to stick with the things that work. It’s not the best start there is, but it’s mine, and I intend to make the best of it. And to keep me on track, I’ll be writing about it here. Next week? My first kickboxing lesson, this time with added kickboxing. It’s going to be great.

 

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Posted in Alasdair Stuart, Health | 1 Comment »

Making Noise: The Artist

January 20th, 2012

 

The man on the stage is big. He’s not so much poured into the dinner jacket as it’s built around him, emphasising his powerful shoulders and neck. He’s top heavy, the sort of top heavy you get from extended periods of training. He should lumber, thudding across the stage like a large, angry, tuxedoed wall but instead he moves fast and light, feet and hands always in motion. He waves to the crowd, capers, dances. He’s the centre of attention and he’s arrogant certainly but he has reason to be. His latest film is a success, he’s handsome, rich, successful and has a spectacular dog. Life couldn’t be better.

 

He’s not alone up there either. His wife pirouettes in from one side of the stage, a little resentful, a little bored, but she’s smiling and he’s clearly delighted to see her. From the other side of the stage, the owner of the studio strides into view, waving and smiling and counting the empty seats, the sad faces. His smile is a little more fixed, a little more hungry. Behind him comes our hero’s chauffeur, a tall, older man with a severe look but kind eyes. He takes up position the same place he always does; to the right of our hero, standing at attention, ready. They’re joined in turn by a leading lady, a gaggle of extras and a dog. Always the dog. Mimicking our hero exactly, keeping pace with him, a silent partner, the other, arguably more important part of the double act.

 

Our hero is turned, walking backwards, waving and playing with the dog when a woman steps out of the audience. He cannons into her and down they go, a tangle of limbs and excellent hats, elegance and glamour dropped on top of each other from a great height. The theatre falls silent as our hero helps the woman to her feet, everyone waiting for him to berate her for breaking the routine. Instead he looks her up and down, laughs and applauds her. She starts dancing. He applauds more and laughing, she dances in place as the entire theatre turns to face her. She stumbles a little and our hero jumps in next to her, their feet sympatico, the smiles on their faces the same. He can’t stop looking at her and as a result doesn’t see the things starting to happen behind him. The leading lady talking to the movie mogul, the increasingly angry look on his wife’s face. There’s just her and the music and him and-

 

Sound.

 

Our hero stumbles.

 

The audience’s attention shifts.

 

Our hero dances a little faster, smiles a little wider and the audience’s attention shifts back to him. Not completely though, the sound echoing around the theatre and settling in particular around the head of the girl from the audience. The audience’s attention follows it and our hero dances a little faster, smiles a little wider as he realises that fewer and fewer people are looking at him.

 

Clearly he must work harder. He breaks out every single move in his arsenal, every slide, every jump, every acrobatic trick, throwing his big frame around the stage with grace and speed and just a little desperation now. He hits all the right spots, makes all the right choices and lands, centre stage, waiting for applause.

 

The theatre is empty. From next door, he hears the leading lady speak and the audience applaud. He hears the girl from the audience speak, and his heart breaks. The lights go out and, even then, he stays on his stage, alone apart from the chauffeur, and, of course, the dog.

 

There are things our hero doesn’t see, and those things start the moment his reflection ends. He’s a good man, a great man in many ways, but he’s completely convinced of his own greatness. That sort of self confidence can take you to incredible places but it will never, ever drive you home from them again and as our hero finds himself forced to let his chauffeur go, he shrinks even further into his own private universe.. He used to be great. He used to be successful. He used to be somebody. He used to dance. His life is two dimensional now, rendered down to a strip of film, a perfect, lush, black and white image packed with glamour and charm but an image nonetheless. Something which will only keep you warm at night if you burn it. As the flames rise, our hero finds himself faced with one last choice, one so elemental that it’s completely eluded him; who’s music is he dancing to? His own? Or the audience’s? And why is he dancing alone?

 

The man on the stage is big. His dinner jacket is tattered now, scorched and covered in soot but it still emphasises his powerful shoulders and neck. He’s top heavy, the sort of top heavy you get from extended periods of training. He should lumber, but instead he smiles, stands, takes the hand offered to him and begins to dance a very different number. One where you can hear his shoes against the floor, where he’s part of the film instead of the thing that stands in front of it. He’s still the centre of attention but he still has reason to be and this time he’s not alone. The girl from the audience dances next to him, the studio head applauds from behind the camera and as the music he’s never heard before swells, he smiles and lets go. Sound isn’t for him, even now, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is he’s still elegant, still dancing. And now he’s dancing in company. And, of course, the dog is still spectacular.

 

 

 

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The Long March: Henry Rollins

January 13th, 2012

Manchester has decided it doesn’t like me. Or rather, Manchester has decided it’s indifferent to me. It’s an unusual sensation. Not the benevolent disinterest of London or the jovial hostility of Leeds, but rather the sense that Manchester knows I’m here and doesn’t care. There are a million stories in the naked city and none of them are about me. This is a city that moves at its own pace and that pace is patently not mine, proved by a final train approach so slow I could have walked the final seven minutes, a train station laid out entirely unlike every single other one I’ve ever been to and the taxi driver’s charming combination of disinterest and refusal to drive at anything over twenty five miles an hour. This is, of course, is on top of hopping a train from work, falling asleep, getting beaned simultaneously in the head and shoulder by a stumbling conductor, narrowly making my connection, fighting down the negative body image I have at the moment and trying not to get nervous about the interview for a full time job I have tomorrow.

Which means I will have traveled four hours in total to see a three hour show that I can only actually attend for two of those hours before getting back in a taxi, back on a train and going back up the country to York.

I would like to think Henry Rollins would approve.

Rollins performed in Manchester on January 12th, the very first show of his The Long Marchtour. Former lead singer of Black Flag, front man of the Rollins Band, publisher, writer, poet, businessman, actor, Henry Rollins is a very modern renaissance man. A figure pathologically interested in everything and a man who, as he charmingly admitted tonight, is a work slut. Someone wants him to go do something, he says yes. After all, Henry likes to be busy.

I encountered Rollins’ work for the first time when I needed it the most, faced with tragedy. My best friend had leukemia three times. I was close to him for the last two, one bout which took place in our lower sixth year and one in our upper. He died when it returned that second time, having chosen to forgo chemotherapy. . He was given six weeks to live and of course took eight because he was obstinate and contrary. His death and the run-up to it tore me and at least five other people apart, to the point where none of us ever quite healed right. We healed, make no mistake, but we healed different. We learnt to be strong, we learnt to be resilient, we learnt to find comedy in horror. Several of us learnt to drink and drink heavily.

The thing is though, that period, his death and the aftermath, aren’t what I associate Rollins with. Instead, I remember boring the crap out of everyone else in my year by playing The Boxed Life over and over on increasingly mangled cassette and wondering why no one else was laughing. I remember doing that in the room where we took registration. The same room where I was asked to, and did, tell the entire class that he was considering turning down chemo the second time. Because my teacher was a coward. I did it. I’ve never quite stopped my legs shaking from doing that, it sometimes seems like, never recovered from the strain of having to be that strong. The only reason I was able to do it was Rollins.

The stories Rollins tells on The Boxed Life mix observational comedy and storytelling with his strange fascination for sleep deprivation and the things that happen when you travel across multiple countries to do small shows and then come back. A lot of it is very funny. A lot of it is difficult to listen to. Rollins, at that point in his life, seemed to be uncomfortable with being so well-rounded: an articulate, funny man who was also a tattooed alternative icon, a fitness nut and a role model. He railed against that last one in particular because he’d almost never had one himself. What I didn’t know at the time was he was struggling to cope with the murder of his best friend, Joe Cole, shot to death in front of him.

It’s a crass comparison, I know.  His best friend was dead, mine was dying. He was big and smart and articulate, I was fat and big and smart and articulate. But I clung to it through two of the toughest years of my life and I returned to The Boxed Life again and again. I wouldn’t listen to it constantly, but it was a touchstone for the bad days.

It’s sitting on a shelf in my new apartment right now, for that exact reason. The bad days are the days where I need to listen to someone close to me in mentality and physicality struggling with issues similar to mine. Not in the same boat, but a few boats over and rowing in the same direction. Rollins’ work stayed with me out into adult life as well, through further spoken word shows, movies, books and seeing him live seven years ago. He was a whirlwind of adrenalin in 2005, a man who revels in conflict handed the gift of a president and national mindset diametrically opposed to his own.

Henry had fun that night.

He had more fun tonight. Henry Rollins turned fifty last year and the only way you can tell is the grey hair. He strode out centre stage, dressed in black, threw us a jaunty salute and looked for all the world like a slightly alternative 1960s astronaut greeting fans on his way to the pad. He thanked us for coming, greeted us and then just started…talking. This is the genius of Rollins, that he can play a room with hundreds of people in it and make it seem like he’s talking to a group of close friends. Henry’s back in town after a couple of hours and he’s invited us round to catch up.

He’s been busy too. Rollins is clearly delighted to be National Geographic’s newest, most rock-and-roll presenter. A good chunk of the time between this show and the last has been spent filming a show about man’s interaction with animals.  As he talked about this – about going to the rat temple in India and further south, spending time with the Irula tribe who hunt and cook rats in a manner simultaneously efficient, disgusting and hilarious – you could see his eyes light up. Rollins is the epitome of the rock music stereotype, a man with close cropped hair, tattoos and muscles to spare but what he loves, what he embraces head on? Is knowledge.

He was as enthusiastic about his trip to North Korea, where his long standing fondness for speed walking down moving walkways nearly got him in trouble at Kim Il Sung’s tomb. He was even more enthusiastic about his time spent in Mongolia and Vietnam. Vietnam clearly left a lasting impression on him, especially his time with Mr. Ka, his guide and a man who was seemingly incapable of talking quietly or not mocking John McCain at every opportunity.

Each person he met Rollins talks about openly and respectfully, and he’s clearly delighted by new experiences and new places. This is a man who, by his own admission, has toured for thirty years and as a result has a tremendous respect for the road and a tremendous need to be on it. He tells a story about meeting a monk who asked what he thought of a large statue of Buddha and specifically about the bird shit on it’s head. Henry admitted to having no idea and the monk smiled, saying ‘If you don’t keep moving, the birds will shit on you. Even if you’re Buddha.’ It’s difficult not to see this as the closest thing there is to a core Rollins operating philosophy: Keep moving. Keep working. Keep your eyes open.

It’s that last quality that tripped me. Early in the evening he told a story about attending a free gallery showing of Captain Beefheart’s artwork with his best friend, Joe. Broke and bored, they decided to attend because they thought they would be the only people in the area who knew who the Captain was. The place was, of course, packed.

This was the year Blue Velvet was released , so when they saw Denis Hopper, riding high on his role in the move, leaving the show, Joe dared Henry to act out. Henry, of course, did and the articulate, eloquent way in which he describes his thought processes on what to do only makes his eventual decision, to scream Hopper’s character’s almost rabid threat:

‘HEY FUCKER! I’M GONNA SEND YOU A LOVE LETTER FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART, FUCKER!’

at Hopper’s back, and the ensuing shriek of terror and rapid escape of the Oscar winner, all the funnier. It’s vintage Rollins, so vintage that it’s only after the show that I realised something. He talked about Joe, his mate.  Not about Joe’s death. He talked about something funny that he and his friend had done and did so with fondness and humour and affection and no visible pain.

He’s healed. This is, for all his fondness for a good fight, a gentler, more compassionate Rollins than ever before. A man who wants his life and wants it to be as exciting as possible, as fast as possible. It was genuinely moving to see, this man who has hurt so badly for so long able to not only look back happily but seemingly not realise he was doing it. Aged fifty, happy and setting off on The Long Match Tour to Estragon, Bologna, Henry Rollins is stronger than he’s ever been.

My own Long March will be over a little sooner. My escape from Manchester was completed with relatively minimal fuss: a late taxi and a surprisingly complex game of three locomotive monte. I’m writing this en route to York where, in less than twenty four hours, I have a job interview, running shoes to pick up, a bed to assemble and a room to finish unpacking.

I’ve left with a parting gift too. Blowing through the doors at the venue, I found myself in front of the merchandise stall in the process of being assembled. The only thing up was a sign saying:

T-SHIRTS WILL BE AVAILABLE FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE END OF HENRY’S PERFORMANCE

I had to leave an hour early because the only train I could get after that would get me into York fifteen minutes before I need to be at work tomorrow morning. Normally, I would have looked at the stall, accepted I was out of luck and moved on. Tonight, I explained I had to leave early and asked if I could buy a shirt. The vendor said yes almost before I’d finished talking.

What I didn’t realise until later was this was the first night of the tour, and the shirt I have in my bag is the first one sold on the entire tour.

To me. The fat teenager who clung to his words like a life raft and the man he’s still becoming. I intend to finish unpacking in that shirt, to attend my first kickboxing lesson in that shirt, to go running in it. I intend to work hard and be happy and they’re both things I know Rollins would approve of. The Long March goes on, and long may it continue.

 

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Hell Comes To The Midlands-Dave Jeffrey’s Necropolis Rising

November 13th, 2011

The dead are rising, literally. The lazy way to put it would be that zombies are the new vampires but the truth is both a little simpler and a little more nuanced than that. Zombies, like vampires, are a concept that’s beautiful in its simplicity; a human corpse, still wearing the physical and emotional accoutrements of its life, animated and seeking living flesh. Zombies rise with satire and commentary hard-wired in and you only have to look at the variety of approaches taken to the concept, from the brutally dark comedy of both versions of Dawn of the Dead through to the quiet, English apocalypse of the 28 Days Later diptych to see that the zombie can be whatever we want or need it to be. This is the monster as blank canvas, inviting and daring authors to do something different with them.

 

Necropolis Rising does two very clever, very pulpy things with its central conceit. Here the action is moved to Birmingham, England’s second city and the last place anyone would expect Armageddon to begin. Jeffrey has a nice eye for human for detail and the events that destroy so many lives are started here by nothing but good intentions and bad luck. It’s a ‘for wont of a nail’ kind of approach and it works well, especially coupled with the gentle, almost polite descriptions of Birmingham. It’s a nice city, one where normal things happen and Jeffrey has great fun turning that on its head, especially in the sequence where an entire football stadium of fans, killed and resurrected, assaults the main characters.

Jeffrey also uses this normality to emphasise how abnormal the situation is. There’s a palpable sense of panic to a lot of the scenes on the ground, and Jeffrey again has a nice eye for detail as two separate teams of characters converge on one location for very similar reasons. This gives the book’s action sequences, especially the climactic ones, a real sense of scale as one group of characters witness something that the other has caused, or the consequences of one person’s actions are felt by everyone still standing, regardless of whether or not they have a pulse. Jeffrey thinks big and that action movie sensibility, combined with the unusual setting gives the story a unique tone balanced somewhere between macho chest beating and desperate pathos.

This is further accentuated by Jeffrey’s smart character choices. The principles are a group of thieves who’ve been hired to extract something from Hilton Towers, the building at the centre of both the story and the disaster. It’s a nice idea, juxtaposing the discipline of the armed forces with the shambling anarchy of zombies and it’s given an extra twist here by the characters’ backgrounds. Kevin O’Connell and Stu Kanaka, the two leads, are ex-Royal Marines driven to their life by making a difficult, and right, choice. Neither man is a saint, both have blood on their hands but both are trying to use their past rather than make amends for it. These are good men who do bad things for a living and Jeffrey uses the Birmingham disaster to bring this to the fore again and again. O’Connell in particular is a fascinating character, a man with infinite compassion and infinite capacity for violence, both of which lie at the heart of his relationship with his team. O’Connell is pathologically incapable of walking away from someone in need and this colours his interactions with his team, in particular Suzy Hanks, his girlfriend. O’Connell is a troubled man, certainly, but he’s fiercely loyal and Jeffrey cheerfully uses that loyalty as a stick to beat his hapless hero with. No one wins in Necropolis Rising, people just get lucky and far fewer people than normal at that.

This willingness to take pulp archetypes and situations and turn them on their head is what lies at the heart of the book. Jeffrey lays out all the usual toys for a story like this; shadowy corporation, different types of zombie, lone survivor, traitor in our midst etc and uses all of them in very different ways. Some of it is groundwork for the sequel, certainly, but the interaction between O’Connell’s team and the Royal Marines sent in to extract the only survivor of the Hilton Towers experiments is very unusual and pleasantly surprising. Likewise that survivor, Thom Everett, is an odd combination of every-man and potential monster and it’ll be interesting to see where Jeffrey goes with him in the sequel. There’s a lot of ground work wrapped around Thom but his abilities are neatly tied to his dreadful childhood in a way which balances empowerment with vengeance. Thom could go either way, and that sense of jeopardy, of contained threat is something which Jeffrey uses to tremendous effect. The finale in particular is a colossal action sequence with one genuinely unique high spot, all of which is wrapped around a very strong emotional core. This is a zombie apocalypse story, certainly, but the people on the front line are just that; people. Flawed, desperate, human and very mortal.

 

Necropolis Rising is a neatly balanced combination of action, polite English apocalypse and smart, tightly designed pulp. It’s assured, tightly plotted and consistently surprising, marking it out as something very different in an increasingly crowded market. If you like your thrills undead, then you need to read this.

 

 

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DC Day 1:Fighting The Next War Early-Blackhawks

October 8th, 2011

Blackhawks is one of the more eccentric of The New 52, reviving a set of characters created by Will Eisner, Chuck Cuidera and Bob Powell in 1941. The Blackhawks were a squadron of fighter pilots, each a different nationality and united to fight in World War II. The concept was immensely successful, although as World War II ended and more time passed, it became increasingly difficult to sell the idea without plugging it into more conventional superhero trappings. The characters were revived twice, made several appearances elsewhere but the concept as a whole began to fade into DC history.

 

This version, written by Mike Costa, manages to not only honour that concept but nest it inside two separate, but complimentary, modern tropes. The first is the re-imagining of the squadron as a much larger unit,with ground forces, logistical staff and UN backing. This places them, interestingly, in almost exactly the position the original version of Stormwatch occupied, and also allows for a larger cast and scope. There are echoes of the classic Larry Hama run on GI Joe here, with the team’s secret headquarters, vast array of aircraft and concealed headquarters, along with their code names and differing specialities all elements that echo Hama’s work whilst still honouring the original cconcept. They’re still an elite unit of international misfits but by placing them in a deliberately contemporary, grounded setting, Costa is able to expand the focus of the series but not lose sight of it.

The second is the inevitable engagement of pop culture with the War on Terror. Pop culture, by its very nature, reflects the time in which it was produced, as shown by the original series using World War II as a backdrop. That engagement has, over the space of the last ten years run the gamut of responses, from gutpunch emotional reaction to cynicism to it becoming a backdrop rather than an active element of fiction. Geopolitical chaos has become a fact of life, and, at its best, pop culture has explored both the human consequences of that and the ways in which society has reacted.

Which all seems like a colossally over intellectual approach to a comic involving fighter planes, power armour and a Russian who is called the Irishman but this is the background that Costa plays with and he plays with it well. He neatly sketches out the idea of the Blackhawks as an elite special forces unit who are tied to the United Nations but not as tied as some might think. It’s another standard trope, one which Ellis used to great effect in his run on Stormwatch and which was later explored by Greg Rucka in Checkmate and it works well here, once again. The end result is the sensation that the Blackhawks are essentially this universe’s attack dogs, the unit that the UN unleash when something difficult and unpleasant needs doing. He does a good job of sketching out the characters too, with the unflappable Canada and Kunoichi, the team’s resident pointwoman and seeming adrenalin junkie the two standouts. Again, none of these characters are unique or revolutionary but none of them need to be. This is high tech pulp, and as a result the more familiar the characters the better.

 

Blackhawks is a known quantity but a welcome one. Costa’s script has some nice action beats to it and the art, by Graham Nolan on layouts and Ken Lashley on finishing and cover is brawny but expressive, giving the characters and the tech room to shine. All in all, this is certainly one of the more left of centre of the DC New 52 but it’s also one of the best put together. It’s a smart, ideas-heavy fast paced modern thriller and it deserves to be given a chance to shine.

 

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DC Day 1-Stormwatch

September 24th, 2011

The Warren Ellis run on Stormwatch was the first long term run on a series that I genuinely connected with. The idea of a UN-controlled superhuman crisis intervention team was always an attractive one but under Ellis the book became something tighter, more mature than it had been before. Ellis wrote Stormwatch officers as humans, people with ideals and agendas and flaws all struggling against a job which often seemed designed to stop them doing any real good in the world. That constant struggle, between what was right and what was necessary ultimately spawned the sequel book, The Authority, and indirectly changed the visual and intellectual grammar of Western superhero comics for most of the following decade.

 

For me though, Stormwatch was always a more attractive concept than The Authority. Stormwatch were mortals, normal people with abnormal abilities trying to do their best and often failing. They were human as well as superhuman and that humanity was one of the book’s most important elements. It’s also one of the elements that Paul Cornell’s relaunch of the book keeps in place.

 

Cornell reimagines Stormwatch as something closer to the Knights Templar, an organisation that has existed for centuries and which has tasked itself with protecting the Earth from superhuman and supernatural threats. Cornell cleverly weaves his other book, Demon Knights, into the background, establishing them as an early iteration of Stormwatch and in doing so neatly moving the book into territory closer to Jonathan Hickman’s excellent Marvel series SHIELD, than Ellis’ previous run on Stormwatch.

 

This historical context also provides a broader canvas for Cornell, and he clearly relishes exploring the idea of Stormwatch being something closer to a monastic order than a small fire team of soldiers. Adam One, one of the new characters is a good example of this. An immortal strategic advisor, Adam is equal parts priest and general, a man who has advised world leaders but can’t quite remember some of their names. History but with the corners knocked off, superhumans who were suits to work instead of capes. Stormwatch was always a curiously English type of superhuman comic and under Cornell’s reign that only looks like it’s increasing. He’s aided no end by Miguel Sepulveda’s clean, rounded, expressive art.

 

The first issue does a neat job of exploring what Stormwatch does in this new iteration, as one team is sent to Moscow to try and recruit a new member, a second is dispatched to investigate a mysterious artifact and, alone on the moon, Harry Tanner discovers something impossible just as something impossible discovers him. If the book has a weakness it’s that it tries to do too much in one issue as Cornell introduces established characters, a modified status quo and newcomers at the same time as moving three linked plotlines along. They all work, and will no doubt all dovetail but all three could benefit from a little bit of extra space. Harry Tanner, the splendidly named Eminence of Blades, in particular is a fascinating character in a difficult situation and I could have stood to read a lot more of him. I suspect, as the series goes on, we will.

 

Interestingly, this minor reservation actually gives the book a different feel. There’s a real sense of Stormwatch being a global organisation dealing with global threats and the fact that each of the missions presented here is equally important drives home how impossible their job is. Stormwatch are the line between us and chaos and the line as it’s presented here, is stretched pretty thinly, even with the addition of DC mainstay the Martian Manhunter and newcomers like Harry and Adam One.

 

Stormwatch feels idfferent to every other book in the launch. There’s a cautious altruism to the way the characters are presented, a desire to do the right thing even though they may not be thanked for it, that’s tempered with the pragmatism of working in the military. That’s ultimately the glue that holds the book together, through three plot lines, moments of gleeful pop culture invention and the combination of two universes’ worth of characters; the greater good. Stormwatch have been reimagined as the guardians of humanity and I can’t think of anyone better suited to the job.

 

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DC Day 1-Demon Knights Issue 1

September 22nd, 2011

 

It’s not often that you get to sit in on the start of a universe. This month, DC Comics have relaunched their entire line, scrapping every book and restarting most with new first issues and a new status quo established by Flashpoint, the last massive, universe spanning crossover. It’s a standard narrative model with comics and one which I both encountered and learned to fear time and time again during my time as a retailer. Crossovers killed momentum in individual series, they rarely had lasting consequences and a lot of the time they turned people off buying the extra issues until, due to a vagary of the comic industry too tedious to explain, it was far too late for us to get them.

 

The New 52, as they’re being called, looks to be a little different. The central titles are all there, of course, but there’s another wave of books which are odder, more eccentric, deliberately experimental. I’ve read most of the flagship books so far and all the odder ones and it’s a fascinating, not to say remarkably consistent, piece of world building from the ground up. Whether it’ll stick, or indeed if any of the most interesting books are still alive in seven months time, I have no idea. I do know it’s been a fascinating ride so far, especially with those outer edge,more eccentric books.

 

Demon Knights is one half of a pair of linked books, both written by Paul Cornell. Set four centuries in the past it opens with the fall of Camelot and neatly explores what several of the DC Universe’s more supernatural characters were doing on that day. Cornell uses the fall of Camelot as a backdrop, a fulcrum around which several characters seize opportunities or find opportunities seized from them. The most interesting of these is Jason Blood, reimagined as a hapless apprentice of Merlin who not only sees the long game but happens to have a demon, Etrigan, caged for just such an occasion. Jason and Etrigan are fused and Merlin disappears, muttering about how this will all become clear centuries from now. It’s an obvious point to make given his pedigree with the show but there’s something of Doctor Who to Cornell’s portrayal of Merlin, particularly the 7th Doctor and his combination of polite, quiet, erratic charm and terrifying strategic mind. Camelot has fallen, Camelot will rise again and Merlin may have just ensured that it does. It’s an interesting take, simultaneously echoing the Nicol Williamson and Joseph Fiennes takes on the character and producing something which, although glimpsed briefly, is fascinating. It’s a nice approach to Blood’s origin too, explaining his longevity and showing how he evolves over time, coming to terms with the monster he shares space with.

 

Cornell really comes into his own over the next few pages though, as Madame Xanadu, another supernatural DC mainstay, opts to stay in England rather than sail off to Avalon. The portrayal of Arthur’s heroic death is typically impressive but Xanadu’s ‘Oh SOD this’ as she jumps overboard not only grounds it but honours it. The King is dead but everyone else isn’t, and Xanadu’s decision to stay looks to be an important part of the book’s overall plot.

 

In a gutsy move, that plot then picks up some time later with Jason and Xan on the outskirts of the village of Little Spring. Some time has clearly passed and the two have an easy, comfortable banter that walks the reader through the introductions of the rest of the cast. The splendidly named Vandal Savage, a villain in modern DC continuity is a large and charmingly up front barbarian whilst Sir Ystin, last seen in Grant Morrison’s 7 Soldiers of Victory series,is neatly repositioned here as a slightly andogynous drunk, pining after the fall of his version of Camelot. They’re joined by Exoristos, an Amazon and Al Jabr, an Arabian craftsman in a sequence which not only sets up the group status quo elegantly but also sets them in the gloriously traditional setting of an inn. Here, Cornell plays with the traditions of the tabletop roleplaying group and modules that started with ‘You all meet up in a bar’ and turns it into something easy to follow, but still complex and nuanced. By using this traditional setting, Cornell marries his cast of established characters and newcomers to create something that feels organic straight , even before the arrival of the central villainess and the two big surprises concealed in this issue. The first is that Xanadu is in a relationship with Etrigan, not Jason Blood, and Jason remains unaware of it whilst the second is that the villainess may not be so villainous at all. The Questing Queen is a glorious idea, a monarch who strides across the land with an army of slaves on dinosaur mounts and gives every impression of being evil. Yet, she talks about repairing the world, rather than conquering it. There are early hints this is a book as much about clashing ideologies as it is about a medieval demon punching dinosaurs in the face and I honestly can’t think of a writer better able to balance the two than Cornell. Only time, and sales, will tell if he’s going to be given the opportunity to do it.

 

Demon Knights is easily one of the strangest books to be launched in The New 52, but it’s also one of the best. Cornell’s script is tight, funny and incident and idea heavy whilst Diogenes Neves’ pencils, backed up by Oclair Albert’s inks ground the book in a believable medieval context, even if that context is heavily fictionalised and involves dinosaurs. This is smart, tightly paced and designed pop culture storytelling and all involved should be very proud. If you haven’t picked it up yet, you’re curious about the new DC Universe, or if you like the idea of knights fighting dinosaurs, start here, you won’t be disappointed.

 

Demon Knights Issue 1 is available now

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Quiet Violence, Loud Brutality: Torchwood-The Men Who Sold The World

August 18th, 2011

One of the bravest things about Torchwood has always been the show’s willingness to kick things over. It’s second only to Spooks in the Gleeful Murder of Characters stakes, has been cheerfully up front about throwing ideas onto the screen and then abandoning them if they don’t work and with Children of Earth, the last series it completely destroyed its status quo. What two seasons previously had delivered, with a straight face, an episode about alien sex gas loose in Cardiff became a damning, bleak and at times genuinely chilling look at how the world would really end.

 

There’s a strong case for saying Children of Earth should have been the last Torchwood story. In fact, it recently emerged that it had been designed to be the show finale if needed. Captain Jack leaves the planet, disgusted by what he’s had to do, Gwen and Rhys hang up their guns and retire and the world, slowly, painfully, tries to return to normal.

As is always the case, it doesn’t last. Miracle Day, the fourth season, deals with what happens when everyone on Earth simply stops dying. Relocated to America, Jack and Gwen find themselves forced to team up with Rex Matheson and Esther Drummond, a pair of CIA agents who have their own reasons for being invested in wanting to know the reason behind The Miracle. Esther is desperate to protect her sister, who is cracking under the horrific realisation that soon, diseases will be everywhere and whilst no one can die, everyone can suffer whilst Rex may already be dead. A horrific car accident leaves him with an impossible chest wound that, whilst it’s healing, may yet kill him. That level of finality, for a man like Rex Matheson, is not acceptable and The Men Who Sold The World, Guy Adams’ latest Torchwood novel, explores exactly what sort of man Rex Matheson is.

The novel revolves around a shipment of alien tech, sold by the cash-strapped UK government to America. A series of interludes follow one particular weapon from the point Torchwood recover it, from a dying alien in a Cardiff chip shop, through its discovery in the remains of Torchwood’s HQ, the Hub, to the point where the Deputy Prime Minister signs off on the sale. At no point does anyone, even the Torchwood staff, realise what the weapon is and Adams neatly uses this ‘for wont of a nail’ approach to explore how something that is semi sentient, and can alter reality, can end up in the hands of a quiet, well trained mad man. This is the sort of singularity that Torchwood excels at, how a single piece of equipment can change everything and everyone around it, and Adams has huge fun exploring the weapons’ uses, especially in the closing pages of the novel.

 

However, Adams truly excels at the unpleasant and gets plenty of opportunity to explore that here. Rex, in disgrace following an ethical act on a dubious mission, is sent to Cuba to retrieve the weapons and is far from happy about it. He’s a pitbull, a relentless bulldozer of a man who knows how to do exactly two things; work and sleep so he’s rested enough to work harder. Adams neatly builds on the way Rex and Esther interact and is brave enough to make Rex a profoundly unpleasant character in several ways. Esther is an asset, one who is useful and nothing more, one who can always be pushed, always be driven. Rex doesn’t thank her, doesn’t treat her as an equal and yet, at the same time, relies on her. He’s not sexist, or at the very least not chauvinist and Adams makes it quite clear he’d be as unpleasant, if not more, to a male colleague. It’s just that Esther has the information Rex needs, and she never quite gets it to him fast enough.

For all this though, Rex is quietly an ethical man, if not a good one. He’s placed in harm’s way because he refuses to sit back and let an innocent get hurt for the good of an operation and this core of decency, this refusal to let people be exploited keeps turning up. Rex isn’t a great man, but he is a good one and there are several moments where he refuses to take the easy way out. He decides to interrogate a suspect only as an act of last resort, makes sure an accidentally stolen pair of sunglasses are paid for and works within the rules, a lot of the time, even when he doesn’t have to. It saves his life more than once in the novel, too.

 

Pitted against Rex are a CIA Black Ops unit led by a man who is overly fond of violence. Where Rex uses it as a tool, Gleeson uses it as a utensil, communicating through the constant implied threat of betrayal, of murder, to keep his men in line. Again, Adams uses an interlude to explore why Gleeson is like this and the end result is a character who whilst far from sympathetic, is much more nuanced than many villains. This in turn makes his escalating acts of brutality all the more shocking, you can understand why Gleeson is acting like he is, you can understand his reasoning and you can see the holes in it exactly the way he can’t. Sheaffer, the member of the unit who has a crisis of consicence, is equally well realised and he and Rex made a spectacularly grumpy double act. Crucially, Adams’ nails the characters’ voices throughout, with these exchanges in particular very easy to hear in Mekhi Phifer’s grandstanding, flamboyantly snippy delivery.

 

It’s Mr Wynter though, who will stay with you. Mr Wynter is old, polite, well spoken and is the man who the people who really run the world call when something needs cleaning up. He’s George Smiley with added brutality, a softly spoken old spook who enjoys nothing more than peace, quiet and killing people who stop him enjoying life. He’s a monster in a nice suit, a gentle old man who uses his appearance and physicality as a lockpick the same way Rex uses his like a cosh. Mr Wynter spends much of the novel in the background, quietly observing the chaos Rex and Sheaffer cause but despite this, his scenes remain some of the strongest in the book. His scenes with the real rulers of the world are abstract, almost minimalist discussions of how to deal with the Gleeson problem are delicate, circuitous and filled with menace. Mr Wynter’s eventual solution to the problem is equally menacing, giving Adams a chance to flex his narrative muscles and, interestingly, giving Rex an opportunity to both be the hero and slightly sidelined, all at once. Mr Wynter walks quietly through The Men Who Sold The World but his footsteps echo long after the book has finished and, I suspect, Adams may not quite be done with him.

 

The Men Who Sold The World is a pared back, bunched fist of a book that hits hard and keeps doing it. Smart, funny, brutal and tightly controlled it’s a perfect example of how to do a tie in book that expands on its core material rather than simply aping it. The story of the quiet, anonymous men who run the world and a loud, obvious man who opposes them, The Men Who Sold The World is essential for anyone who’s following Miracle Day or anyone who wants to get a different perspective on Torchwood’s newest, grumpiest leading man.

 

(The Men Who Sold The World is released on the 18th of August, 2011)

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The Judo Diaries-The Training Dummy Strikes Back

August 15th, 2011

 

Let’s talk about fear for a moment. There was a time when fear grabbed my jacket before I’d even left the house. My pulse would rise, the bottom of my stomach would fall and I’d walk to Judo with a sick feeling. I was the fat kid. No, not even the fat kid, I was the fat, 35 year old nerd who had no business whatsoever stepping onto the mat with chiselled young gods and goddesses with biceps, pectorals and all those other things that I’d successfully buried under a couple of decades worth of chocolate and pie.

 

That fear, to my tremendous surprise, has faded. I didn’t even notice it go. It left a friend though; the simple fear of reinjuring myself. I go on about this I know, but its been close to four months that I’ve been working with a busted wheel. It’s better, almost completely better but I still can’t kneel properly, still can’t move quite right, still don’t trust myself with the injured knee. There was a twang, and there was a scream and nothing has been quite the same since.

 

Then there’s the fear of getting beaten up. Make no mistake, I am 6’1 and over 300 pounds, but I’ve been frightened of fighting my entire life, for two reasons. The first is that, well, I’m a nerd. I talk, I actually talk for a living on some levels and the idea of solving a problem by beating someone up is something which I find massively unsettling and, well, a little uncouth.

 

Then there’s the other fear. Because I’m Big you see. I’ve been Big my entire life, a little too big for the world. I break things sometimes, or used to, because my spatial awareness wasn’t great because, well, I’m Big. You have to be careful when you’re Big. Careful and patient and you must never, ever under any circumstances lose your temperature. Because not everyone else is Big and if you lose your temper with someone who isn’t Big you could hurt them very badly.

 

I’m Big. I’m Clever. The two sometimes feel mutually exclusive.

 

So I’m scared when I step onto the mat. It makes sense, because fundamentally what you’re doing is learning to hurt people. And they’re learning to hurt you. And sometimes when people learn they make mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes lead to twanging. And screaming. And four months of physio.

 

I do it anyway. This may be bravery. It may be masochism. I prefer to think of it as a healthy respect for my art and my fellow students. And also maybe a little fear.

 

I’ve been scared recently for a different reason and it’s a slightly embarrassing one. I’m tough. Not in that ‘Can be punched many times without being hurt’ way but rather that I’m difficult to hurt. I’ve been seriously ill maybe three times in my life and seriously injured exactly twice. The first time I broke my arm by literally falling off the ground and the second involved a twang and a scream.

 

I’m scared of getting hurt again. Because I’m a cynic, and because whilst the black dog doesn’t live at the bottom of my garden he certainly plays there and most of all because I understand story on a genetic level. Now is the perfect time for our hero (Who in ths instance is me) to be seriously injured again just before he completes his recovery. In fact, the only time that’s more narratively smart for me to get injured again is less than a week before a tournament.

 

Again.

 

The thing I’m scared of is randori because randori is free practice and that means it can’t be predicted. Someone will turn the wrong way, push the wrong way, you’re as likely to do the same and before you know it it’s back to the bottom of the rehab ladder. So I don’t spar, apart from select circumstances and when I do I’m slow, I’m clumsy, I’m cautious.

 

Let’s talk about caution and violence for a moment. Caution in any martial art is a good thing. Fundamentally, you’re doing a combat sport, you’re fighting someone, and whilst the ‘storm in and blitz them’ approach works in the short term, it won’t work forever. No one’s Rocky, no one has fists of stone or muscles of granite. Everyone gets tired, everyone makes mistakes and everyone gets shut down when they do. So caution’s good, caution’s your friend, up to a point.

That point is when you freeze up and that’s where our old friend fear makes a return. Make no mistake, Judo is scary. Any combat sport is scary, but for me, at least there’s something visceral and frightening about the loss of control inherent in Judo. Your opponent isn’t just trying to beat you, they’re trying to throw you off your feet, hyper extend a joint until you can’t take the pain, choke you unconscious or just hold you still for twenty five seconds. Fighting hurts. Judo hurts.

So there goes the fear again, as the Doves once sang, and the way you deal with it is the way you deal with all fear. You face it. You look it in the eyes and you prepare for pain. You accept that pain, and the fact it won’t and can’t last forever, you can face your fear.

 

I sparred this week. More than I have for almost four months. I had two standing fights with no ground work and I lost one and won one. I threw a blue belt with Tai Otoshi, the throw that injured me, and it felt great. I turned, yanked, he sailed through the air in a perfect circle and landed on his back. My knee stung, a little, once.

 

I sparred on the ground too. Three times. I won two and I lost one. Groundfighting is the closest Judo gets to striking forms for me, because it’s there that things get fast. You and your opponent grapple for position, legs get thrown odd places, arms lock and you roll and turn and struggle until one of you is pinned, one of you taps or you’re both exhausted.

That last one happened. I was sparring with a black belt about six years my junior. I’ve worked with before, he’s a good guy, and like a lot of people cross trains with us and Brazilian Jujitsu. BJJ is Judo without the standing work and it excels at moving your opponent on the ground and locking in a never ending stream of extremely painful holds. I excel at being put IN extremely painful holds so I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence when we started and locked up.

He turned under me, locked his legs around my arm and extended. This is an armbar. It’s the thing that, at the moment, former Judo Olympian Ronda Rousey is using to destroy her Mixed Martial Arts opponents as fast as possible. It hurts.

I stood up out of it. Just put my mass behind it and pulled and got my arm clear. I closed on him, put him down, got one of his shoulders on the mat and just ground. I have a lot of mass and I’m not scared to use it anymore so I pushed him into the ground, looked for a couple of holds, never quite got either and he tried his level best to get out of them.

 

The drill got stopped. I sort of slumped off him and we lay there for a moment before he patted my arm and said something which I think was ‘nice one’. I may have grunted. My heart rate was up. I was gasping for breath, my throat was dry and I’d not won.

 

But I had fought. Five half matches in one session, two good throws, a good solid choke attempt, some welcome tips from higher belts and exhaustion. Together those don’t just add up to victory, they add up to something better. Hope, possibility and the very real knowledge that I’m making progress, that I’ve earned my place on the mat. All of it, the pain, the anxiety, the fear, the caution, all of it is worthwhile because of that.

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The Judo Diaries-Come to the Dark Side, There’s Cake

August 6th, 2011

It sounds faintly ridiculous to say that Judo is a polite sport but it is. There’s none of the overt brutality of boxing, none of the flashy savagery of Thai Boxing where one of the most effective ways to win is to kick your opponent in the same leg over and over in quick succession until they can’t stand. There’s not even any of the frankly intimidating blurs of motion that, when slowed down, are revealed to be the incredibly acrobatic kicks of Taekwondo.

 

One of the interesting things about Judo, one of the things that draws me back over and over, is that courtesy though. You’re remarkably clothed (None of the shorts and not much else ‘I’m Spartacus!’ aesthetic of Mixed Martial Arts here), you’re not hitting people’s faces, you’re not actually making striking contact at all. Judo, fundamentally is a grappling form meaning you pick your opponent up here and put them down there. Often at speed, but still, the principle remains the same. You have your set of moves, he has his, whoever executes them first or fast or strongest wins.

 

Well, technically.

 

Let’s talk about grading for a moment. I’m five months out from my red belt grading and I am getting antsy. I am, to use another military term I’m rather fond of, short. Short timers were people who didn’t have much time left on their tour and I first came across the term in The Short Timers by Gustav Hasford. This is the book Stanley Kubrick would adapt into Full Metal Jacket, and it refers to soldiers who have a small amount of time left on their tour. The phrase ‘I’m so short I can’t even have a long conversation’ from the book has started to float through my mind as the realisation slowly sinks in. In three weeks, two weeks physio plus a week’s buffer I’m going to be able to spar again. Fear and happiness and adrenalin and sweat and terror all mixed into one and barrelling straight towards me at 24 hours a day.

 

There are two things that are going to happen when I can spar again. The first is I am going to get beaten, a lot. I’m slow, I’m cautious, I’m not moving my left leg much and I’ve not sparred outside about three minutes in the last three months. I’m going to be a training dummy with vocal chords and rudimentary motor skills and that’s fine because I won’t be that forever.

The second thing that’s going to happen is I will cling to procedure and rules like a drowning man clings to a piece of driftwood. I know, technically, everything I know how to do and I also know that absolutely no plan survives contact with the enemy. Or at the very least, contact with the guy on the other side of the mat.

 

So I can either accept this and work through it slowly, or improvise and work around. I know which one I’m going to do. I know which one I want to do. They are not the same thing.

 

I want to stick to rules and procedure and good form because my form’s sloppy in places. I’ve got a lot, in the last three months, out of going slow. Again, and we are jumping all over the pop culture references here a line springs to mind, this time from Mermaids. ‘You drive like old people make love’ applies a lot to how I’ve been practising Judo recently. Slow, precise, deliberate. Still fun, just takes a little longer.

So I’m getting there, and my confidence is going up but the simple truth of the matter is I’m going to be slow and deliberate and the best I can hope for is fighting to a draw for a while. A draw isn’t a loss, although to be clear? I’ll take losses, I’ll take my lumps and come back with a smile on my very pink, very sweaty face. We learn when we fail, so losses are just bigger lessons, ones you have to have the courage to swallow however bitter they may sometime be.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, the metaphor for this week’s Judo Diaries has just arrived. Why don’t we all give it a round of applause as it takes it’s seat?

 

We did grading prep this week and, for the first time, the group was split into three. The white belts were taken off to one side and shown some of their techniques, the brown and black belts were taken off to the other and in the middle was myself, Steve and a red belt I’d never seen before who were set to work on grading prep.

 

There are three throws you need to know for yellow belt. O Uchi Gari where you sweep your opponent’s outer leg out and push them to the ground, Ippon Seoi Nage where you step into them, grab an arm and throw them in a manner that, shall we say, Captain Kirk would find very familiar and Tai Otoshi.

 

The throw that hurt me.

 

Tai Otoshi involves stepping into your opponent so your back is to them, sticking your right leg out and hauling them over the top of your leg onto the mat. Done right it puts your opponent exactly where you need them to be and done wrong? Done wrong your opponent gets to spend three months limping and spectating.

 

I did it. I was scared, for sure, but I did it and throwing and being thrown with that throw gave me a new perspective on fear. This wasn’t terror, just fear, that bottom of the gut flex where you’re waiting for the shot, the punch, the snap, the hard word. The moment before the fight rather than the fight itself. The fear stayed down there, I made sure of it, but it was there and it was real and this week it turned into something really interesting; the desire to push back, hard.

 

We were taken for this particular lesson by one of the club’s black belts who’s also a high level coach and referee. He’s unforgiving, to say the least, as I find out when for the first time ever, I got given what amount to a punishment drill. Ippon Seoi Nage only works if you drop straight down your opponent before lifting them off the ground and I have a tendency to bend forward which robs it of a lot of it’s power and crucially, risks your balance. Balance in Judo, in any martial art, is vital. If your balance is shot you’ll over extend, you won’t protect yourself and you’ll be thrown, or punched, or kicked, or elbowed or any other variety of ouch that can legally be delivered.

Which is why I found myself standing straight against the wall of the dojo, arms up simulating the throw, bending my knees and keeping my back straight so only my buttocks touched the wall. Apparently, twenty of those every morning and evening will give me perfect balance. I’ll let you know.

 

Bitter Pill One

 

We ran through all three throws and then, we took a left turn. You see, it turns out there are two ways to work in Judo, the legal techniques and the techniques which are legal enough. Make no mistake these aren’t anything overtly nasty, no cheeky punches in the nose or knees to the groin. These techniques are grease to the wheels, ways to get your opponent where you want him to be or off you faster or so uncomfortable the only thing he can think is to get you to stop doing that right now.

Case in point; your opponent has you in a side chest hold? No problem. There is absolutely no contact with the face in Judo. None. However, there’s no problem with the throat. So you push your hand, thumb first into their neck and you keep going. They will feel so uncomfortable they’ll move their head down. At which point you pop your legs up over their shoulders, cross your ankles, close their airway, turn them and you sideways and scoot down their body before putting them in a different nastier hold. All legal, all nasty. Or you can push them down, put them in a side hold and yank their arm into a full on arm bar. As was done on me. As was done on me hard enough to make me cry out when the elbow was over extended. Which was greeted with me being gently but firmly berated for not tapping out faster.

 

Bitter Pill Two

 

Later the same lesson, we were shown a genuinely impressive transition where you try each of these throws, your opponent steps out of them and you finish with a modified O Uchi Gari where you sweep one leg and yank the other up so you’re only standing on your left leg as you fall. Or, my injured leg, as I like to think of it. We were working through this and, for the first time in months, my inner smartarse came out. I smiled tightly at Steve and said ‘Why don’t I get this wrong first?’ and started in on it. I got it wrong. Of course. So did he. Needlepoint work with needlepoint balance and my left leg is still four inches shy, four inches rusty.

 

Bitter Pill Number Three. And no water in sight.

 

Everything we tried wasn’t good enough and it was starting to open a door in my head. A door which led to three months of pent up resentment and fear at the thought of being left behind by my compatriots. There was resentment there too, and a lot of it; about missing the tournament, about being injured, about having to explain my injury over and over, about the pitying looks I’ve caught from time to time, the nagging sensation that other people think I’m sciving. And you know what? If anyone thinks that, they can say it to my face. Because I’ve turned up, damn near every week, when I can’t kneel right, when I can’t throw at speed, when my rhythm is off and I can’t spar and I’m scared to move my left leg. I’ve kept coming, I’ve kept moving, I’ve kept trying because I’ve waited five damn months to get my yellow belt and nothing, not a bad knee, not lack of connection with lessons, not lack of focus, nothing is going to stop me from getting there.

 

Nice speech isn’t it? It’s also pointless. I’m a red belt. It’s my job to be told how to do it right. My job to shut up and listen and my job to try harder, to fail better next time. Besides, my resentment at being nitpicked so much came at least in part from the fact that these techniques felt…sneaky, a little too close to pushing my luck. I’m hard pressed at times to remember the correct technique let alone the back door cheeky work around to it and it felt, a little, like taking a shortcut. Having spent three months with a bum leg, shortcuts are something I know I don’t get to take.

 

Until we got to the Kame Shiho Gatame variant we were taught. Kame Shiho Gatame is a hold down where you lie at ninety degrees to your opponent and hold down their opposite shoulder and thigh. Unless you grab their opposite shoulder and underside of their knee and pull your hands together until they cross. Hard. You hold your opponent down and compress their chest, hard, basically choking them with their own leg and neck.

 

The first time I tried it my partner tapped out.

 

To me. With a bad leg, three months of resentment bubbling over in my mind and a burning desire to get gobby with an instructor who was frustrating me.

 

All three bitter pills just slid away.

 

I still have things I’m good at, straight out, in Judo. Most of them are standard techniques, some of them are modified ones, where my big arms and upper body strength work in my favour. As I realised that, another door opened. One with a yellow glow behind it and the promise of getting back everything I lost and more. I’m still there, I can still do this, I’m still travelling. An hour of being told I’m wrong and how to fix it is a pretty cheap price for realising that.

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