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| That's me on the right, with the white trainers and black trousers |
It should surprise no one that I was never a particularly sporty person. Sure I captained one of the football teams at my prep school (but it was like the Fourth XI or something, a sop for those who wanted to play but weren't very good) and I played football and squash at university, but the only sports I truly enjoyed were table tennis and fencing.
Those were my 'thing'. I think, if my aorta hadn't exploded and hospitalised me, I could have been a fairly decent fencer if I'd kept it up.
Although I never competed in any official tournaments, there was this one time when our fencing club traveled to Eastbourne for a friendly match against another club, and that's where these pictures come from.
At one point my coach Maître d’Escrime Christopher Penney said something along the lines of "if you keep practicing you could fence for England one day", but I suspect he was just being polite.
Anyway, it did inspire me to keep going at it regularly until I went off to university. Sadly, although I hoiked my fencing gear all the way to the coast, at that time Bournemouth University didn't have a fencing club.
So my swords gathered dust for three years and by the time I returned to 'real life' I, stupidly, thought I didn't have time for fencing anymore.
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