Tuesday, October 18, 2005

En Garde!

On Sunday I took a drive up to Manor Road, my former claustrophobic residence when I first moved to the City of Cheese and Not Much Else. You see it turns out I lived about five feet from the sports centre where my fencing class was being held.

So how did it go? I was expecting ritual humiliation, but it was ok, aside from the fact that being left-handed makes finding a foil less fun. Being told to look for foils inscribed with "Left Handed" on the pommel rather than "Leicester Uni" or a drunken "LU" that more resembles "LE" is a bit of an ordeal.

It was actually quite good fun. The coach is actually quite amusing, and there's drinking after the classes which makes me rue the notion of driving in to the class. I don't think I missed much last week given the coach didn't turn up and we started working on footwork and so forth, and the lunge which is a very basic move. I did get a bit narked though when it turned out all the jackets and so forth were for skinny people and I was made to stand to one side in a corner while everyone else (including larger people) took it in turns to get stabbedd. The armourer assured me that this would be taken care of next week.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

warned you about being left handed didn't i.....

... some lefties fence cack- handed; might be worth a go?

Other than that check out Leon Paul or AllStar for fencing kit- always worth having your own jacket and plastron (esp for the leftied as most jackets are for righties)

Stuart said...

Yeah but at £120 for a jacket I think I'll try a little more before I buy.

Anonymous said...

well my jacket is a ladies RH epee from Leon Paul- it was about £85 ( mind you that was a few years ago)

Did they have left handed gloves btw? That's something my club(s) never seem to have.

Stuart said...

Yeah, there was some lefty mits and the jackets are supposed to be reversible. Ho-hum.

Anonymous said...

Reversible? Who told you that nonsense? You can't turn the buggers inside out- there are pockets on the inside for chest protector cups and the like.

Mind you from what you're saying it sounds like they are foil jackets, but even so you get right/ left handed ones (FIE regulations say the zip *must* be on the opposite side to the sword arm, and if you use an Epee jacket the sword arm has extra padding)

Make sure you wear your plastron- I never used to cos I thought it was unnecessary and bulky... then I ended up in hospital.