4:46 a.m. - 2006-10-08
Return From England
All,

It's my usual hour of waking (ass in the morning) and The Boy is out visiting LWay. I was due to go with him for a night of fun, frolicks, a few beers, probably some impromptu training in the park, and three or four videos starring The Rock which we wanted to mock into oblivion. This idea flew straight out the window when I fell asleep in the triangle.

*ahem* Brief explanation:

Our flat is a loft conversion, and once inside you walk into a hallway, from which on your left would be the bedroom and your right would be the bathroom. In front of you is the kitchen/living room. If you turn around in the kitchen/living room and look up you see a triangular roof space which goes back over the hall and into the outside corridor, which while only a meter in height at the most (the entire flat has not one straight wall) is more than large enough for storage at the back and a thick futon mattress towards the front, complete with pillows. You can look down and either watch TV or just read, but mostly it's the equivalent of a second bedroom for when The Boy is messing about on the computer and I can't deal with being in the bedroom listening to the tapping of tiny keys. LWay and a couple of the other ninja can get up there, but The Boy can only use a ladder, which we recently had installed up against the wall. It actually annoys me since until we get it properly painted it looks like we're perpetually decorating. Ah well.

The point is that I fell asleep in the triangle and our phone was in the bedroom. I assured The Boy that I would be over at LWays place in a couple of minutes...and please feel free to insert "several hour gap" here. I have apologised profusely for not hearing the phone, but did point out that The Boy had been coughing in my ear every twenty seconds for most of the night, then he had woken up long enough to fiddle on the computer, have lunch, have sex, and fiddle on the computer some more, leaving me more than a bit tired.

In non grumpy-just-woken-up-to-find-I-missed-everything news, I got back from England on Wednesday and was picked up from the airport by The Boy, who was been delighted to see me and has given puppylike attention all week (and, thanks to his cough, no sleep). Strict instructions were given as to my carry-on luggage, in that I should have my tabi (jika-tabi, rather than the socks) and gi and whatnot with me, because we would go straight to training. Oh, hilarity. *siiigh* For a start, getting through customs from England at the moment is no fun at all. If you feel like going through customs with a bag full of ninja clothing, even if you've taken the precaution of having your registered ninjutsu card with you and bothered to MAIL your damn weaponry to your Boy in advance...well, it's even less fun. I got "wanded" and my bag pulled apart, something which has always annoyed me because I tend to pack very neatly for ease of UNpacking, and idiots dragging all my crap out and then just tossing it all back in makes Madame Anal over here irritated. Aside from which, I was already pissed off at having to mail the aforementioned weaponry to myself anyway, because not only would I have wrapped them and put them in my hold luggage, not only would I have had no access to them at all, not only do I have a weapons permit saying I'm ALLOWED to carry that crap about provided it's not upon my person in the cabin, BUT I'M A FUCKING MARTIAL ARTIST! I DO THINGS TO PEOPLE THAT MAKE THEM PASS OUT AND THEIR EYES BLEED...WITH MY HANDS! Good gods, how retarded do you have to be to realise that someone turning up on a plane, trained to defend against all manner of weapons, does NOT need to be holding a fucking NAIL FILE to make themselves extremely difficult to deal with? Ah well, I suppose a good reason for me to behave myself is that I'd get thrown straight out of the bujinkan and never train again should I decide to do anything stupid...that and getting shot when we landed.

Secondly, my valiant effort to throw all of my ninjutsu-related effects into my hand luggage was thwarted when half-way through Copenhagen airport I realised I'd left my home dojo shirt (the undershirt with the dojo name I was told to wear to...well...as it turned out embarrass myself, but supposedly represent us) back in England. I'd also left the shirt I bought at the seminar on my bed, amongst myriad other things, such as my hakama and a bunch of clothing I wanted to drag along with me. Thankfully I'll be seeing my Mother and Grandmother mid-November, so will get them to do what they did last time and bring a bunch of my stuff with them, and they've already posted the shirts.

Finally, after the big reunion, we got to our training grounds. By this point I hadn't slept in well over thirty-six hours and felt like death, but as we were early a few of us ran off to the big obstacle course/playground, and sights such as grown men flying down a death slide yelling "WHEE!" were to be seen. This was, perhaps, not the greatest of ideas since it involved lots of charging around on all our parts and by the time TSensei showed up and we'd changed and begun training (and it took me what felt like a WEEK to fix up my tabi) I was already fading fast. About an hour into the session I had to go sit out, and TSensei suggested I get a glass of water and watch for a few minutes. An hour later I still could barely get up, so wound up simply watching until the final "thankyou for training" ceremony. TSensei did admittedly give me credit for coming at all and said he most likely wouldn't have, and on days when he'd flown back from other seminars hadn't. This from a man who is ten times stronger than me, and has stamina going through the roof.

It's about a week since the seminar, and I've heard from a few of the people I met there, including the regular trainer who invited me back. I'll likely go into a lot more detail about what we did there at some point, but right now the only thing to say is that TSensei is very keen on organising a seminar with me. ME! I'm arguably the worst ninja in our city, and without a shadow of doubt the most junior member of the "core group", so I'm terribly flattered. I doubt I'll take him up on the offer, though could possibly work out something that HE could teach. I think if I tried it there would just be a bunch of men in black pyjamas staring at me shortly before bursting into hysterical laughter while I tripped over a sword.

Eh, ninja life.

Me

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