Taekwondo Tournament in Cambridge
It was one of those days where you have this weird feeling that things were not going to be working all right. We were meant to have left at 1700hrs to make the 3-hour trip up to Cambridge where one of my fighters was meant to be taking part in this full contact tournament. When we were still in Portsmouth at 1830hrs and Lee still had not turned up, I had a feeling it was going to be a long evening.
Lee finally turns up and turns out the delivery people couldn’t find his house after driving past it 3 times. Idiots. Anyway, so there we were in the car, Steve and myself, Lee and a mystery person who was hitching a ride. I’m not going to state his name, but he’s from the Octopush Club and he’s got a fit younger sister with whom he is very close. The type of relationship that sounded very dodgy and very wrong. More on that later.
When we got to Cambridge, it was dark but good ol’ Steve’s Mum had made us dinner. Woohoo! Steve’s parents were a kindly folk but Steve’s dad looked kinda worried to see me. Turns out Steve had told him I was from North Korea and his poor dad believed that I was gonna eat his 2 pets, a dog and a cat for supper. Nice one Steve, have you never noticed that it says Singapore Taekwondo Federation on the back of my uniform?
After clarifying that I wasn’t some commie bastard and more importantly, I wasn’t into pooch pasties, Steve’s dad took me on a kindly tour of the house and explained how it was all my bloody fault that in parts of the house, there are marks on the walls. Apparently, someone, aka Steve Burt has been practicing his Axe kicks against the walls. My fault? WTF??
The next morning, we were off to a start, Steve’s Mum was gonna make me a fry up for breakfast, but she had to go for her morning run, so Steve was assigned to make my breakfast. Sigh, breakfast turned out to be…… er, don’t ask.
When we got to the tournament site, turns out they had quite a crowd. Lee managed to steal a couple of tables and chairs from the St John’s Ambulance Brigade and plonks himself comfortably right in the middle of the human traffic and proceeds to teach nearby victims the complexities of Hiragana and Kanji. Mr Burt got off to a pretty good start, landing some pretty impressive Axe kicks and nearly knocked his opponent unconscious at one stage with a well-placed Turning Kick to the side of the face.
Steve’s opponent in the final match of the day turned out to be some weirdo from Cambridge University who stuck to him like snot, throwing pathetic looking punches. Steve, meanwhile was having a bit of a problem dealing with him, you couldn’t really blame the poor guy though. There I was on the side, screaming my head off telling him to get in there and kick the other guy, while Mr Burt senior was stood next to me shouting, “Run away Steve, he doesn’t like that Steven, run away!”
At the end of the day, Steve was awarded the gold medal based on more points scored after 2 rounds of 2 minutes each. After the tournament, we were joined by our mystery hitchhiker, who had brought his family along to give him the send off. Before we set off, him and his sister “who were very close” had a very dodgy looking intimate hug and a goodbye kiss which sounded like it involved a bit of tongue action. Yes, I was stood that close, and it also disturbed me that she had her hands on his ass and vice versa.
In the car on the way home, I couldn’t take the suspense and started pumping our mystery hitchhiker for more gossip. Turns out they really are siblings and that I’m just jealous. The story gets even more twisted, apparently the house was under renovation and so was his room. So he slept in the same bed as his sister over the weekend. Now that’s gotta be WRONG!
Well, what can I say, it was overall a pretty good weekend, we came, we saw, we took the gold home. On a bonus side, I learnt a bit more about the local customs and ways to forge closer relationships with members of the family, what with me being a foreigner and all. Of course a big thank you to Steve’s Mommy and Daddy, our driver Lee, our mystery hitchhiker for teaching me about the Facts of Life and Steve for doing such a fine job.
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