Consulting Swordsman
I’ll be turning 52 on Sunday, and we’re celebrating in the usual way with a 25% discount on all digital products, with the code GUYSBIRTHDAY25. This works for all products (courses, subscriptions etc.) at courses.swordschool.com, and also for all digital products (ebooks, audiobooks, print-at-home decks etc.) at swordschool.shop Digital products are great because they have … Read more
As I posted on Sword People last week, I’m taking 100 days off alcohol. Why would I do that? The DEXA Scan: an uncomfortable truth I was in London a couple of weeks ago for a family reunion, and took the opportunity to wiggle along for another DEXA scan (at BodyScan UK). My last was … Read more
I really don’t like New Year’s resolutions. I’m also not a fan of treating this time of year as the beginning of anything. A commenter on this blog once mentioned that he does his ‘New Year’ adjustments in April- when life is returning. It struck me as very sensible. This is the middle of winter, … Read more
Ten days after I first arrived in Finland, back in 1994, I met a girl. Not very long after that I met her mother Kexy, a civil servant who was a serious horsewoman, and had hunted with her father when she was younger. Rosy, the girl, told me that her mum was nervous about meeting … Read more
I am not a doctor. And even if I was, I’m not your doctor. If you have any kind of medical issue, don’t get your info from the internet, still less from swordsmanship instructors. Do some research, then go talk to your doctor. Clear? I dropped 10kg from round my waist, almost by accident. Here’s … Read more
This is a progress report for the “get over boarding school” project. If you’re here looking for some technical sword stuff, I suggest going here or here. I usually edit my posts quite carefully. Not this one, because if I do, I will end up deleting the whole thing. So please bear with me. Shortly … Read more
Oh my, what a week it has been. I was scared of hitting “publish” on my last post, for obvious reasons. I am a big bad scary martial arty swordsman, or at least that’s how a lot of people seem to see me. And now anyone who reads my blog can see me as … Read more
I spent much of yesterday evening crying my eyes out. The kind of wracking sobs that leave you weak and shaky for hours afterwards. This is not normal. I was packed off to boarding school at the age of eight. Unlike most other boarders, I did not get to go home every three weeks. Because … Read more
There are always at least two sides to every story, and usually many more. As historians, we do our best to take all the evidence into account, and tend to rely more on first-person eye-witness accounts than on secondary sources. But I have recently been personally involved in historical eye-witness accounts, and I’m here to … Read more
I don’t normally write about political matters on this blog. It would seem mostly off-topic. But the current issue of “gay marriage” is regrettably still current, and it is oddly relevant to how I run my school. The Finnish government recently acted to prevent full marriage equality. This is one of the very few times … Read more