En Garde!

I was up early this morning (this holiday lark is supposed to be relaxing!) so that mum and I could go to a fencing session. This is the sword-fighting sport, not putting a barrier around your garden type-fencing. Our mad instructor introduced himself and quickly taught us the position (an L-shape basically). We were then taught how to move both backwards and forwards. Next we were told to put on a load of protective clothing (an arm-thing, a jacket, a glove and a helmet) and were given a sword. The type of swords we used were the foil, which is commonly used for practising. After being taught how to both attack and defend (parry) we had a few fights. This was great fun and as expected I was rather rubbish but I did stab the shit out of one little kid. Well when I say “stab the shit out of”, I mean I touched him with my sword a few times. Fencing is actually not that violent and the movement of the sword is like a skewer rather than how you might think. I really enjoyed the session though, it was great fun. Here’s me during one of the fights avoiding an attack:

OK, not really. I will never be doing that sort of thing. Before today all my fencing knowledge came from Mario and Sonic!

It was a quick change and a quick walk to go to lunch. We had a rather lovely carvery consisting of pork, Yorkshire pudding, stuffing, roast potatoes and a load of parsnips. I love parsnips and it was a lovely feeling to realise they had some. I filled my plate with pretty much nothing but parsnips and I ate every one, because I love them so much!

After we had let our food go down we went swimming again. It has become tradition for use to go swimming every day whilst at Center Parcs. It was really busy today though, making the rapids rather scary. Being quite big I end up knocking various people over if they stand in the way (the currents are strong) but they deserve it. For the first time this holiday I went on the flume which was rather fun though less exhilarating than when I was younger. In my blog yesterday I didn’t mention the cold plunge pool. It’s a tiny but quite deep pool where the water is at a considerably lower temperature than the rest of the pools. It’s relatively not that cold but it feels really cold when you go in there. I stayed in for about thirty seconds yesterday which is the longest I’ve ever managed. It really is that cold.

Our evening activity today was table tennis. I discovered that I am worse at this than any other sport I have tried my hand at this weekend. We took it in turns to play singles games up ‘til 11 points and the most I scored in a game was two. My brother has improved from the days when he would manage to hit the ball onto everything except the table we were playing on.

We were fortunate to catch Sherlock on TV again tonight. Once again it was rather good and I look forward to the final part of the little series next week. It’s about time we discovered more about Moriaty! It’s one of the best things on TV at the moment and if you live in the UK I thoroughly recommend you check it out ASAP.

Tomorrow, after another morning here,we return home. That means I shall be blogging from the comfort of my own room and I will be able to respond to all the comments and e-mails that have been building up. See you then!