Consulting Swordsman
My younger daughter is something of a handful, so I’ve been thinking a lot about things like obedience, virtue, loyalty, and authority lately. These are often associated with martial arts training, so I thought I’d share my views here. I think it is important to distinguish between skills and virtues. Skills are abilities cultivated by … Read more
What’s this? A new book? Or an old one? My recent fascination with producing affordable facsimiles of fencing manuscripts began with wanting to curl up in a chair with Vadi. Mission accomplished. The proof copy arrived this week, and I have released it for distribution. It will go on sale on February 28th. I set … Read more
A student once asked me, “when can I call myself a swordsman?” I think he was expecting my answer to be a certain number of years spent training, but I said “when swordsmanship is your primary means for analysing and solving problems.” This was not what he was expecting. It is why I think of … Read more
About a month ago I was checking through a pdf of Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, and thinking how lovely it would be to just pluck the manuscript off a shelf and curl up in an armchair with it. So I looked into getting a copy printed and bound locally. It was going to cost about … Read more
In November 1967, De Arte Gladiatoria was sold to the Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma. It lies there still. In the process of doing research for the second edition of Veni Vadi Vici (which should be out this year), I found the auction catalogue on ebay, and bought it. As you may know, I’m not one to … Read more
2016 was a hell of a year in all sorts of good and less good ways. Celebrities apparently dropping like flies and some seriously crazy political developments put my own experiences of the year into some pretty sharp relief. Be that as it may, I’ll run through what I did last year in the hopes … Read more
The New Year is upon us, and with it, a new opportunity to do interesting things, and a time to perhaps take stock and think about what’s important. That would be lovely, except right now I’m totally overwhelmed with stuff to do. You might be to, so here’s how I deal with it. First, let … Read more
In “Following my own advice” I described how I try to get something important done every day before checking emails, because prioritising the important over the apparently urgent is key. In that post I rather blithely referred to concentrating on ‘creating assets’, and loosely defined assets as “anything that adds value to your life. Value … Read more
I am resistant to change in the English language. I dislike the use of ‘reference’ as a verb. Refer to something, don’t reference it. And as for the astonishingly lazy and stupid “I could care less” when the speaker means “I couldn’t care less”, well, that makes me quite cross. But every now and then … Read more
Just yesterday Louise Mann, a student on my Knee Maintenance course, sent me a review she had written. It blew me away, so I’m sharing it here, with her permission. Part 1: A gentle warm up. Excellent safety advice regarding not following along slavishly, but actually knowing and understanding your own physical limitations and acting appropriately. … Read more