Southhampton Grading 27/11/05
Second grading for the club! (Ever I think? Or at least since I’ve been with it) and it went gggrreat. We arrived at Southampton at about 3ish thanks to Alan (the STRAND driver) - Matt + Nat tells me he smelt a bit, but who doesn’t like the smell of old man I ask myself? Anyway, so we arrived at 3pm and went into the grading arena and then straight into a queue. After queuing for a bit we decided that it wasn’t that good queuing so went into the hall where it was freezing and my feet did actually fall off. The room though was packed full of Taekwondo students all ready to grade, Master Pat Donnelly did a short warm up with the whole room (one of the kids made a horrific noise when doing a lunge) and then the pee-wee’s stepped up for some white belt grading. It was ridiculously cute, I couldn’t stop laughing, I felt so bad – one of the kids (he must have been about 6) did the same motion for every kick which was a very slight raise of one leg. Nat insisted that he should pass cos he was so cute, but I begged to differ. Anyway some discussions about Brian Anderson’s name (It’s inevitable) and then we were up next. They had some problems calling Charlee’s name (as per) and the nerves struck in. I have to admit, I did awful: I did a high block when I was supposed to do a middle block and in the next stage (where we did one-for-one non-contact sparring) I nearly kicked the person in the face, although it was actually their fault. Afterwards we went outside for a group picture (which will be on the website soon), and headed back home to Portsmouth. Nat and Nat failed miserably in skanking a lighter of random Southamptoner’s and Alex led everyone back to the minibus (good job he did as well cos I was actually lost), where reliable Alan took us back to Portsmouth and we all headed home for some food, which was awesome – I love food. I ears dropped Colin and Kofi’s conversation about computers and would like to report that he illegally downloads software!
Anyway, I think everyone passed the grading, so are all now yellow tags and we had a great time, many thanks go to Fab and Master Pat Donnelly (our instructors) and I hope we have many more gradings in the future.
