Continuing The Isle of Wight or my blogs are to long...

Monday, July 17, 2006 2:03 AM

Wednesday is a half day, and also marks the beyond half point of the week, which is bad. We start in the morning with Qigong and go over some of the simple Tai Chi forms in the morning, and the later session is fitness and sparring. As with the previous day I had to go back to the nurse for dressings, where I found the old dressings had slipped (obviously nothing to do with the sparring matches…) causing the Micropore tape to stick to the burnt flesh. Thus when the old dressings were removed half my arm went with them, something that is quite painful, and something I don’t recommend to anyone else.

After wincing my way away from the medical centre I decide to meet a number of other members of my club at the beach where we just generally sat around and some of us tried to learn to speak seagull. All we seemed to manage to do was spark a war between Seagulls and Ravens (seriously they even called in reinforcements). I guess this goes to prove that you shouldn’t use Kung Fu students to broker your bird peace treaties, especially between war hawks.

Unfortunately I missed the evening’s entertainment because I was teaching an American student the finer points of British humour, namely the works of Monty Python. The entertainment to which I speak was at a nearby pub where some guy had taken it upon himself to tell a group of Kung Fu instructors and students that he could kill them with his finger, leading to predictably humours results as he attempted to prove it on one of the Singapore instructors, who predictably brushed him aside with ease.

Thursday was another day of Kung Fu, but also the day we decided to go out for a meal after training. So the whole group went into town, and where else would a group of Kung Fu students go? That’s right we went to a Chinese restaurant. The food was great, the beer was great, if expensive (£5 a pint, ouch) and they tried to stiff us on the bill. For instance there were eleven people on one table, several of which didn’t drink and the restaurant tried to charge them for 46 bottles of Chinese beer, a quantity that would have surely lost them the use of their legs. In short if you’re ever in Sandown in the Isle of Wight and decide to eat at the Royal China restaurant, good food, good drink, read your bill very carefully.

Then on to a pub so I can show off my extreme (lack of) Pool skills. I lose, naturally and that marks the end of the second to last day.

So Friday, the last day of training and as such it’s quite bittersweet. The training is much the same as the other days until the afternoon, when we decide what we are to do for the demonstration later. I’m down for the Tet Bey Sum Chien (The Shuffling Three Wars) one of the fundamental routines. It’s a relatively simple routine; the only problem is that I was doing it with another person and we had to be in synch, and we only had half an hour to practice.

But in the end it all comes off alright and no one notices my poor performance of the routine…

There’s also the ubiquitous Lion dance which is one of my favourites, and the breaking really hard stuff with bare hands thing. One of the instructors proved you need to be thick skulled in this game by breaking a stack of roofing tiles with his head, and the youngest member of the group (and reining junior champion) broke a house brick in half with a palm strike. Of course there was also the guy getting hit with an axe, always a crowd pleaser.

So that’s it, my Martial Arts week is over and I will soon be returning to work, hateful boring predictable routine work. We eat the remainder of the food, collect what’s left of the drink and begin the end of the week party, predictably filled with all the substances a pagan temple needs. It’s a good night that leaves me comatose, yet thankfully without hangover the following morning as I finish my packing and prepare to leave.

With my car packed and the behaviour bond returned I leave, making the solemn journey back to Fishbourne where I shall catch another (late running) Ferry to Portsmouth and the mainland. I arrive too early

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