Chapter Three - Growing up the Aikido way
I have already mentioned my life long friend Dave Miller in the previous chapter. Dave was from
Edinburgh and had only recently moved down to London. His accent wasn't the worse one I had heard but still confused me at times. But he was a nice guy, if a total mess most of the time and a bit of a geek.
To be honest Dave was the first non English person I had really had any great dealings with. Having been brought up in an exclusively white area of London I had not come across many people other than white Londoners.
I can remember when I was about nine or ten years old playing in the playground of my primary school, Christ Church, when the whole of the school was stunned in to silence. We ran to the fence that surrounded the playground to watch one lone Blackman walk passed, for most of us it was a first! And even at my secondary school non whites were in a minority and tended to stick together.
So as a Scot Dave stuck out quite a bit, well for me at least. We soon became good friends, and because we were close together age wise (Dave being three or four years older than me) and also in our starting times in aikido, we soon looked for each other on the mat when we needed a partner.
At about the same time we started several other guys started including an even bigger geek than Dave called Neil McDonald. Neil was an odd looking guy with bulging eyes and the weirdest feet I have ever seen. But we hung out together for several years. Two brothers and a couple of friends also started within a few weeks of us starting, the brothers were Phil and Jim Newcombe. They would also feature in my life for the next few years, and Phil and Jim would go on to become high ranking aikidoka and establish them selves as top medallist’s at the aikido world championships.
Back in those days life was simple. I spent all day at a job I hated sitting behind a desk trying not to let my brain dissolve. Monday to Friday I spent doing aikido. And at the weekends I went to a pub, a club, or a party, or if it was a good one ….all three!
After a few months of doing aikido under Irvine Cleydon at the National Coal Board club, BBC club and UCL club we added a further club at the civil service facility in Victoria. And then Dave and I pushed the boat out and started to visit another instructor Ahmeed Saeed. Although Ahmed was with the same organisation Irvine was, the Aikido Development Society, they didn’t see quite eye to eye for several reasons. Ahmed had committed a great sin by leaving our organisation and training with another rival group, the British Aikido Association, in order to get his black belt. Although no where near as good at, or knowledgeable of kata as Irvine, Ahmed had trained with the likes of Ken Broom and brushed his randori practice to a high standard. He also trained in a slightly more traditional aikido manner when it came to developing free techniques. And it was because of this that Dave and I decided to train under him.
Ahmed was an Iranian but had an English wife back then and very much English values. He was a big guy, about six feet tall and heavy built and he used his strength when it suited him on the mat, along with a suppleness you didn’t expect of someone of his size. And he didn’t take prisoners!
Where Irvine would structure the class in a particular way, bringing several elements of aikido in to play on a regular basis, Ahmed was more free flowing and inclined towards free practice and randori. Ahmeed would push us taking us on individually and in pairs and exhausting us to the point we could hardly stand and, in the early days, without allowing us to throw him even once. I can remember distinctly on one occasion being so knackered and frustrated after 20 minutes of trying to throw him that I was nearly in tears but also just intent on knocking his block off before he halted the session. Irvine’s lessons were of a shorter duration but just as painful. Several bits of teeth are probably still imbedded in a few tatami mat’s because I didn’t pick up on what he was trying to teach me quickly enough!
Not long after visiting Ahmeed I also started to train occasionally with another of the association’s instructors, John France. John was a real character and fun to be around. But he was also a very strong aikidoka. He was also one of those enquiring minds who was always looking for a better way to perform a move or a train a technique. This quest for something more took John to Shorinji Kempo (the Japanese version of Shaolin kung fu), several styles of aikido, jodo (Japanese stick fighting), iaido (the art of drawing and cutting with the Japanese sword) and kyudo (Japanese archery). I was lucky enough to be instructed by John in both jodo and iaido.
As I said, John was a delight to be around and he was always joking. But a real rough diamond, typical working class with a heart of gold.
So, there I was running around like a blue arsed fly five days a week, seeing as many as three different instructors and still managing to fit the pub and clubs in now and then. Well a bit more than now and then!
To illustrate a point let me taken you through a typical week in my first year or so of aikido. Sunday, first day of the week and, whoopee, no training. So, a nice lay in until about 10 am. Get up, bit of cereal,and about 1145 am a ten minute stroll with my dad, down to The Beehive pub in Homer Street. Five minutes of waiting for it to open, at which point normally joined by old school friend Dave Murphy and several other regulars. In to the pub where my beer was almost certainly already waiting in my own pewter mug. I would then beat Dave at darts before heading over to join my dad and cribbage partner at the card table. About three or four pints later we would head home for Sunday lunch, complete with a glass or two of wine.
Sunday afternoon would crawl by until about 645pm at which point I would head back to the pub, probably to meet Dave again and shortly be joined by my date who would have, at last, come out of an afternoon nap. More darts, crib or dominoes and another four or five pints and home again.
Monday…yuk…work. More soul destroying crap. But lightened a little by going to the canteen and then the bar with Neil McDonald and sometimes joined by Phil Newcombe, couple of quick pints and back to the grind. Then in the evening straight on to the Civil Service club for aikido and a few pints in the club bar after.
Tuesday work, bar, work, aikido, pub. Wednesday, work, bar, work, aikido, pub. Thursday, yep you got it, same again. Friday, surprise same again. Saturday….oops nearly kept going, but no aikido that day nor work!
Saturday was an interesting day. Up about 9am and then helped my dad prepare Saturday’s evening meal. After that we went to the pub, four or five pints. Home. Dinner, a stew, homemade meat pie or something like that.
Now, there are from here several possibilities. All of which could be interesting. So you will have to bear with me on this while I run through each one.
Possibility number one - pub (bet you didn’t see that coming). The Beehive on a Saturday night could be very entertaining! It was only a small pub, 30 people and it was pretty full! The manager, Gordon, thought he was a hard nut, but far from it, but a nice enough guy, although a little caustic. He did have a very large redeeming feature, his wife Jan. Jan she was gorgeous!
The Beehive was one of those melting pots of society. On any night you could walk in there and find people from 18 to 80 and from every background and career. Dustmen, solicitors, accountants, lorry drivers, shop workers, gangsters, ex boxers, businessmen, bankers, policemen, builders etc, etc, etc. All of them chatting, playing darts, playing cards, drinking together and occasionally fighting together.
I could write a book on the characters in that pub. But I will suffice with naming just a few.
The first name that pop’s in is my head is Eddie, he was ex Hong Kong police. He did a good impression of Magnum before Tom Sellick got near it, in looks as well as other ways. He was a real character too, and one hell of a drinker!
Ed had a little posse of his own, his side kick was Dai Jones….yep he was Welsh! Real nice guy and also a very heavy drinker. Dai had friends too including a Welsh couple, Brian and Liz. Liz was lovely, gentle, kind and nice. Brian was a good guy too until he had a few drinks! I can remember sitting in a bar after hours , when some guy made the mistake of picking on Brian. It was like something out of a film, the guy threw a punch, Brian took him over his shoulder and put him through a table, end of fight. One of the guys friends was all for getting involved and I was raring to go when Eddie pushed me back in my seat and simply told the other guy to back off, funnily enough he did.
There were several other members of Eddie’s ‘gang’. One of whom was an ageing chess shop owner. Well they all seemed old to me I was in my late teens/early twenties, they were mid thirties to forties! The shop owner was a bit of a manic depressive and several years later walked in to the pub and informed everyone he had tried to shoot himself but missed. Everyone had a good laugh and told him not to be a pratt, on his part he just had a few drinks and then went home. What no one realised was that he was being serious. He did a much better attempt second time around and blew the back of his head off!
Not that I was a stranger to guns myself. When I was fourteen or so my mum and dad bought me a couple of replica pistols. And my father, a firearms expert, taught me how to use them (well in theory). Then, at the same time I started aikido I also took up small bore shooting with the NCB rifle club. I ended up with a 89% average after six months and was supposed to represent the club at a competition, but it was getting in the way of my martial arts and I dropped it.
Now where was I, oh yes, The Beehive. Other frequenters of that establishment included Robin a gay ex SAS captain and his friend and prodigy George who was known as the ‘Silver Fox’, due to his sly way with women and his prematurely gray hair. George was also an ex enforcer for a well known North London gang! It was George who took me under his wing for a while and introduced me to a few new clubs (normally for free as he was well known at some) and also introduced me to weight training.
So, after all that, on to possibility number two. A club. Normally we went to The Lyceum. I say we as this invariably included Neil, Dave Murphy, Tony Christopher (my best friend from secondary school), the Newcombe brothers and a couple of friends Loch and Graham.
Tony was, outside of my father, the first person I sparred with. Watching a few chop suey kung fu flicks inspired us to attempt to teach our selves kung fu ( yeah I know but we were young)! Tony and I met when we were about 12/13, and we stuck together until we were about 20. Like Dave Murphy, who we had met when rescuing him from a beating by fellow attendees of Rutherford Secondary school, Tony tried his hand at aikido and like Dave ended up falling by the way side. He disappeared to find himself one day and I didn’t hear from him again for about 30 years.
Club nights normally ended up with us all blind drunk. We did have a bit of a dance on the way there, sometimes even with a girl! Although it did take me several years to realise that snogging the girl before trying to hold a conversation wasn’t the best course of action. One of the draw backs of an all boys school education.
On the odd occasion Dave Miller would join us, in which case the chances of ’pulling’ dropped off dramatically! Much as I loved Dave as a friend and martial arts partner, he looked like a scarecrow. He had little fashion sense, wild hair and after about two pints there was half a chance he was pissed. This was not a babe magnet! That said Neil, was hardly a work of art or Dave Murphy. Phil and Jim, on the other hand, seemed quite able to pull.
And so on to the last possibility, PARTY! OK, there was good news and bad news here. Phil worked with a guy called Stuart, Stuart lived in Essex……guess where all the parties were..yep…Essex!
The parties in Essex were good and always involved a stay over at the venue or one near by. And it also expanded our social group by some margin. It also meant travelling up, normally by train, getting very pissed and regretting it the next day! Little did I realise then that I would one day head out that way to live.
Now I say Stuart and co lived in the middle of Essex, because that’s how it seemed. However, in reality it was only around the Basildon area, so it wasn’t so far, just seemed it for someone who was exclusively a city boy. The guys in Essex were pretty regular guys and we got on with them, and of course the girls were from Essex, so enough said!
I can remember on one occasion I went to a fancy dress party, no idea what as. While I was there I bumped in to a dishy blonde, I knew very vaguely, who was dressed as a belly dancer. We spent most of the evening horizontal on a sofa as the party went on around us. At one point I sort of noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a girl on crutches, but of course I was a bit engrossed. Until she asked if she could sit on the sofa, I didn’t fancy the idea as I was happy with just me and my blonde friend on it and a little argument ensued. I had no idea that in about two or three years time the girl on the crutches would be my wife!
