Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Finding land was a long-haul achievement- working with it to make something amazing will be a long and joyful learning curve- but here we take a little time out to attain something different. On Sunday 23rd May 2021 after seven months of postponed dates, I presented myself at the Bristol Academy to take my 4th dan black belt grading... The Academy is where all black belt gradings for our organisation have been held, but the building is no longer viable and has been sold off, this is the last event to be held on site. From my diary: Monday 24th May 2021 My brain cannot compute that the grading that has been part of my future for so long is actually now in my past. How it began: 5am start, long drive, roadworks prevent parking. Mr drove the first leg, to the Academy: off goeth he to take temperatures all day. I drove to my brother’s house to study my itinerary which I wrote to keep myself calm. After a bout of infinity during which I stretched, hydrated, and ate sensibly, my bro...

Words From The Start Of Lockdown Life Mr looks to the future, it looks like hedges. Saturday March 14th 2020 On the drive to work I got bored of changing the windscreen wiper settings, then a little off-white spider raced around on the steering wheel. I blew it onto the dashboard but it jumped back. Cheeky spider. At work we are bored of coronavirus restrictions and bored at the prospect of it continuing. We don’t know anyone who has it. Supermarket shelves are missing toilet roll, dried pasta, as previously, now also tins of beans and tomatoes. There are travel bans and cancelled events. Last night I had to teach a non contact TKD session - no pads, no sparring, no hand shaking. I began my class with ‘first of all, please don’t breathe because that’s dangerous now.’ All of us are ‘meh’ about these restrictions. We understand that infection control is serious for the immune-compromised, we adhere to protocol for that reason. But the paranoia and boredom: meh. Monday March...

Exciting new work from the winner of the prestigious Best Bonkers Ghost Story TAGB Summer Camp 2010! How Kwon Recovered From Death, Which Is Usually Quite Fatal Kwon was not just not like other ducks. He was not like other mortal creatures. He stood out in his family, as his parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters, and everyone but him, were in the normal range of duck forms and sizes. He stood out in the world, being 18 feet tall with steel kneecaps, sharp teeth and a fist on the end of each wing. This is not enough to explain how, after dying in terrible agony from a spattering of partially digested exceptionally poisonous smelly troll food, he managed to get better. To understand this, the story must go back to before he was born, to the time that Kwon’s parents, Mr and Mrs Noodle, were excitedly expecting their first batch of eggs. Mrs Noodle was anxious about the safety of her babies, so she asked Mr Noodle to find a mountain peak to build a nest on...

Another interruption to my Miracle hunt project, but a distraction is as good as a rest! This is another story written for adults to read to children. It's about a Tae Kwon Do training exercise and it began its gestation when I began teaching these techniques to children. The more gruesome the story attached the more they understood and enjoyed the exercise. I tried the same approach with adults and it also works. It was just verbal fun until our 2010 TAGB West of England Summer Camp, when we were asked to write a ghost story, and I put Kwon on the page. I think if he had a Facebook page he would have more friends than me very quickly, so for reasons of professional jealousy he is currently banned.  Winner of the prestigious Best Bonkers Ghost Story TAGB Summer Camp 2010 The Debt We Owe To Victorious Kwon Kwon wasn’t like the other ducks. He was 18 feet tall, his kneecaps were made of steel and on the end of each wing he had a fist. He wasn’t the sort of ...