Happy Anniversary: Part I...

Me and the Missus are on holiday in Crete.

Today we celebrated 10 years of marriage by having a lazy day walking along the beach and getting upgraded to a very flash new hotel room courtesy of my wife's desire for the better things in life and a shrewd ability to negotiate.

Walking along the beach we shared some romantic anniversary-type thoughts.
'You never had that much grey hair when we married,' said the Missus.
"You were a size 12 when we first married,' I reply.

Apparently that does not constitute romantic banter.

Some time later I am getting the blame for the sea splashing her as we walk along the beach paddling. So I decide to defend myself.
'I cannot control the waves. I do not even pretend to able to control the waves. I am not King Canute,' I protest.
'Some of the letters in that king's name are close enough...' says the Missus.

We married well. Still happy...

The Write Stuff!

It's been a busy few weeks on the writing front at From Beer To Paternity Towers with stage plays going off to two theatres, a radio comedy going off to a major production company and a TV show being sent out to two other TV production companies.

The optimism such periods of creativity promotes is a wonderful thing. It's the first day of the football season where your team can still win everything... before hope disintegrates after a string of bad results; it's the anticipation of a first date when there may be romance and mind-blowing sex ahead... before you get dumped for a younger and prettier model.

I'm no longer overly optimistic about sending scripts out. I put the work in and ensure that whatever I'm sending out is better than the last thing I sent out but after that there are so many other factors that decide what gets picked up and what doesn't.

But, like anything else that really matters, it's important to keep doing it and to keep trying because the alternative is just to give up. And that sounds a bit rubbish.

Besides... I can't really do anything else.

Rolling News: Part II...

One of my oldest friends is now back in the UK after living in New Zealand for many years.

We're both Goolies and we both did A Levels together and our lives have intertwined at various stages over theatrical interests and martial arts interests without us actually knowing at the time... and only discovering these bizarre crossover points when we periodically caught up to discuss things.

Apart from us most recently discovering a newish shared passion for cartography, one of the things we're both a bit obsessed about is grappling and groundfighting so once we're sorted with a venue we'll be doing some rolling and some skill swapping.

I'm looking forward to this immensely. I think he is too. I can't think of a better way to reconnect with someone than to do this and in anticipation I've been going over all my old BJJ, submission wrestling, catch-as-catch-can wrestling and judo books and reading up on armbars, kimuras, Americanas and triangle chokes.

I'm even going to suggest we jokingly give ourselves a name:
Goole Wrestling Club: London Branch

It has a certain ring to it...

Rolling News: Part I...

Besides Hapkido, one of my martial arts passions is grappling and groundfighting and I'm a big fan of a website called Grapplearts.com.

This site is run by a guy called Stephan Kesting, who's a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu black belt and a certified instructor in Combat Submission Wrestling under Erik Paulson. The site is part-shopfront for Kesting's various DVDs (and I have his three iPod apps and they are excellent in case you're wondering) but it also has a load of free stuff that you can sign up for, including an email newsletter that features articles and videos on all manner of grappling-based stuff.

Kesting also interviews various luminaries from the world of grappling for a free podcast and his most recent interview features a high-level American BJJ competitor named Ryan Hall, who's a IBJJF/CBJJ Mundial world and European champion and claimed a medal at the ultra-prestigious Abu Dhabi Submission Wrestling World Championship.

The interview is very good and features quite a lot of information that is way over my head but Hall said two things that really struck me.

The first was when he was discussing a particular technique and he very carefully emphasised that this was his understanding of the technique at the moment.

I thought this was important because it showed that even as a high-level competitor he wasn't done understanding the technique yet and that he knew his understanding of it may yet change in years to come. In other words the technique was not a done deal but a steadily evolving organic entity that grows as his understanding of it grows.

The second thing that struck me about this was when he explained that if a more successful or feted grappler should explain the technique in a different way then anyone interested should disregard what he said and listen to them instead.

A willingness to keep on learning and humility. I bet he's a fantastic teacher.

Sign up to Grapplearts.com if you want to hear the full interview.