Chapter 7. Karate, an alternative story.
Watershed times. As one door is about to close, another is due to open.
In this latest chapter:
Summer courses.
How much punishment can a body take?
No more factory work.
The Winter courses in London.
Reflections on kata (William Vincent and Clive Wright).
The 1978 UKKW Summer Course was in Great Yarmouth. By this time I had two major achievements tucked away; my Dan grade AND I’d secured a place at Leeds Polytechnic on the Graphic Design degree course. I knew that I was finally leaving Mansfield, the escape plan had succeeded.
Paul S and I relished the opportunity of a week’s solid training. The weather was looking good and we were in high spirits. For some reason the organisers had made the decision that we were to train in a nightclub on the seafront. It was far from perfect and Yarmouth was to be the location of a few Summer Courses in the subsequent years, until it fell out of favour the year they decided to hold it in the brand new Marina Centre, a plush sports centre. I think Suzuki Sensei had a falling out with the management; but that story is reserved for later.
The nightclub was not some dingy bar; it was more like a ballroom with multiple smaller rooms. As usual, it was a well-attended course. I was in good shape despite an injury – well, I call it an injury but the reality was it was an infected ingrowing toenail, sounds pathetic but I was subjecting it to the worst kinds of abuse, just by moving on it, training with it, running and exposing my bare feet to the most unhygienic environments. A wrong move would send a jolt of excruciating pain into my foot.
I was lucky on that course, I managed to work with an excellent training partner; a fella who was in the army. He was really good to work with, gave me superb attacks and always insisted on a consistent and unrelenting work rate, which suited me fine; we stacked up lots and lots of meaningful repetitions. He’s still around and continues to train hard.
But I did come unstuck once during pairs work; I stepped back and a very large lady Dan grade did the same and crunched her foot right down on to my infected foot. The agony was intense; I must have shot through the roof.
The Japanese Sensei.
Shiomitsu Sensei was there as well as another Japanese Sensei I hadn’t seen before, Nishimura Sensei. He was a nice guy, flashy dresser favouring colourful Hawaiian shirts and sporting a neat little moustache; always a smile on his face; a real contrast with the more serious Shiomitsu.
Suzuki Sensei’s ‘parties’.
Nishimura was nearly as flamboyant a dresser as Suzuki Sensei, who would always be the first to announce evening socials; ‘Let’s have a party!’ he would announce enthusiastically, and we would dutifully go along to these events; and there he was; tight white trousers and, what to me looked like a colourful silk short sleeved shirt, surrounded by admirers, who would buy a whiskey ‘for Sensei’. The other Japanese seemed less enthusiastic about Suzuki Sensei’s ‘party’ and couldn’t wait to slip away and leave him to it, but he never seemed to notice.
‘Staying Alive’.
One day during the training a slick looking lean young fellow turned up to watch; he looked like a Poundstore John Travolta, greased-back hair, a real Tony Manero. Eventually he plucked up the courage to ask if he could join in; he asked Shoimitsu Sensei; I think he said something like, “This looks really cool, can I join it? You Chinese guys are really good”. Shiomitsu put on his killer gaze and replied, “You call me Chinese again and I smack you one”. I think he trained for one day. What a clown.
The Yorkshire connection.
There was a green belt on the course; a heavy built guy, he had the knack of getting on everyone’s nerves, blurting out inappropriate things, laughing when he shouldn’t; obsequious around the Japanese Sensei. Mr Suzuki not only tolerated him, he actually seemed to encourage him. “Geoffrey, can you carry my bag?”, and ‘Geoffrey’ would come running. Actually, Suzuki Sensei was astonishingly kind to him, we could never figure it out, because to us he was such an irritant. He had a kind of ‘minder’ with him, a gentle quietly-spoken older man, another green belt; his face always looked like he was apologising for his friend.
Knowing that I was to be moving to Leeds I sought out the Yorkshire and Humberside UKKW Rep, it was actually England fighter and notorious hard-man John Moreton. I spotted him in the changing room, introduced myself and asked if there was anyone here from Leeds; he stopped what he was doing and laughed and then pointed across the changing room and said, “him”, he was pointing at ‘Geoffrey’, my face must have fallen, Moreton laughed some more.
Geoffrey knew him from competitions in the North of England where it was said that he would dutifully hold John Morton’s false teeth at the side of the fighting area while he was out there demolishing his opponent.
Later on, I was to spend an awful lot of time with Geoffrey, he was to be a major thorn in my side, but I got to understand him and was a lot more sympathetic to him that I might have been on that week in Great Yarmouth.