Lee Gale

Bunkai was once my weak point but I’m getting along with it now and remembering what to do. And I’m glad to say that my now world-famous bunkai chart that I put together the previous weekend while ill had helped me enormously. I take it with me everywhere I go. In fact I’ve got publishers constantly pinging emails at me asking if they can release it across the world.

Come the first karate session of the week, I was stressed, on the busiest day of my month (sending the magazine the following day), and still limping about. I went through the kata heian nidan a few times in my living room as a screen break and passed myself just about fit enough for throwing shapes. And to help, I popped a pair of ibuprofens as I got into my bright, white gi.

Hmm… the sore left knee is rapidly drifting into disaster territory. I knew there were problems when, last weekend, I had to walk around Central London for a few hours and felt frequent sharp pain – to the extent that we had to stop off at a pub at Turnpike Lane on the way home and have a few daytime pints (The Westbury – an oasis!).

Upon hearing “Yoi!” and then shouting out the kata you’re intending to showboat, (“HEIAN NIDAN!”) you make a PG Tips cup and saucer with your hands at waist height (left off this diagram!), look to the left and thrust to the “television position”. I’m on BBC2, obviously.

The YouTube idea quickly gained traction to the point where Mrs Gale, a trained artist and designer, had suggested an opening sequence including a cartoonised version of yours truly in karate gi. Then, with 7.9 million viewers, all eager to hear the hilarious exploits of an ageing karate red belt, the cash would roll in and before I knew it, I’d be driving a Lamborghini Diablo while wearing a cap turned sideways.

It was a karate twice-weeker and the Middlesex Shotokan core squeezed into the senseis’ home gym for our now regular extra training session. The walk there was in brilliant glowing sunset, but there was no sign of the now famous Winchmore Hill owl and thankfully no “Hum”.

Throughout our earlier-in-the-week karate session at the backyard gym, Winchmore Hill Owl could clearly be heard, its haunted hooting a soundtrack as we punched, kicked and attempted our best Spider-Man press-ups.

I’ve become a very tough critic of myself in karate – there’s a sort of martial arts Brian Clough manager in my head and in this week’s session I was, “Rubbish! Bloody rubbish!”

I’d just been able to walk upright without discomfort following the previous week’s exertions when a text dinged to my new iPhone – my first ever Apple travel blower by the way and I’m struggling with it – on Monday saying: “Come round to the gym tonight!” This was it: we were biweekly!

There was to be a funeral at the church on Green Lanes. Someone had died and the back room – aka the dojo – was required by grieving persons. I sent an email reply to the sensei stating that if we promised we’d be quiet and not shout kiai!, then maybe an agreement could be reached with the friends of the deceased.