Wednesday 10 March 2004

Hello. Today I felt conspicuously better and so went down to the cafeteria for a 5 item cooked breakfast, which was okay.

I'd said to someone at work that I'd try to select some meditative readings for a lenten thingy at County Hall, and, owing to my incapacity, I hadn't done any of it, so I was fairly well occupied until 12 trying to find some things which I thought might be suitable, loosely grouped around the beginning of Luke 4. This was while Nicholas was at some seminars, after which we regrouped for a 10" margherita pizza and then met up with some Jitsukas in the pub. Stayed on the coke this time.

Nicholas deigned it fit to take the afternoon off, so we played a bit of pool at Mary Williams, which is his hall. Strictly speaking I beat him two out of three times, but it was only because he potted the black, whereas when he beat me it was because I was outclassed. Bit of table tennis after that. I really like table tennis, but the game got gradually more and more silly, as we couldn't hire any balls from the porter's lodge, and the one we did find had a crack in it which created many silly situations. There was also a coin-op (recently restored I gather) which had Dynablaster on it, so we had 10p's worth each.

Met back at JCs again for some pre-Jitsu action. Unfortunately I couldn't really join in, as everyone was trying to get their acts together for a grading on Sunday. I just sat and watched. I daresay that if I hadn't felt really conspicuously out-of-place, I would have enjoyed watching it more. They kicked off with some warm-up excercises that seemed to be pretty much what I used to do at Judo. Judo, I am told, is the 'soft' form of Jujitsu. Lots of deliberate falling after that. Then after a while they were countering punches in various ways so as to result with the ostensible agressor lying prone on the floor. Some disarming of wooden coshes and and bottles also followed. The best bit was right at the end where some guy was in the middle of a circle and had to counter attacks from wherever they were coming from... kinda like French cricket I guess.

Back to JCs again. Toyed with the idea of going to a funk night, but I changed my mind at the last minute 'cos I could tell I wasn't going to be in the mood for dancing, and if you're not dancing, then what is a club but an inadequate pub? So we bundled into someone's car and drove out into Swansea proper, to the house where Nicholas is apparently going to live next year. Seems okay. Met Ely, Nicholas' sparring partner, who he seems to get on alright with - tall, cheerful, French girl, who doesn't much like France. Watched a bit of Labyrinth, which is a good film, in it's way, but you do have to be far too careful about where you look when Bowie's on the screen. A double bill of Izzard - dodgy version of Definite Article followed by legit version of Circles, which I thought I had seen little of, but seem to have seen most of actually. Nicholas and Ely fell asleep near the end (Nick insists he was resting his eyes - uh, my eye - so to speak). We got a cab back (this I never do) because apparently it's really too far for Ely to walk.