Round Up
Since I’ve been insanely busy this week I haven’t made a huge effort to keep up to date with my blogging. The reason I’ve been busy is that I’ve been trying to write my Supervisory Board Meeting report & presentation as well as finishing all those bits of work I said that I’d have done by now!
Board Report
Every six months I have to submit a report, a filled out form and a presentation to my supervisory board that consists of My Supervisor, an academic in the field (who chairs the meeting) and a academic not in the field. Now seeing as this should be my penultimate board meeting, I’m meant to have a lot to show for my two and a bit years work. I have got a lot to show but unfourtunately not a huge amount of results, so I’ve been trying to get some decent results to show at the meeting but my Neural Network is not playing ball - and I’ve been getting cross.
Fencing
Thankfully when I get cross I can go fencing and stab people with swords, which I’m getting better at again now. Tuesday practice was good - three challengers and three victorys although one guy has only been doing fencing for a term so it was a bit of a hollow victory (I don’t believe in not performing to the best of your ability to make people feel better by the way). Wednesday was our last match of the term, against the First Team, overall we lost as we should really, but in Foil I got my five points off of all the first team - albeit with Rossen attempting to take the match into the final two seconds. I didn’t do so well in Epee but by then our Captain had buggered off and somehow that seemed to leave me in charge - I’m still not sure how that was decided.
I have my beautiful foil to thank for some of my performance though as I finally converted my french grip into a pistol grip and it’s soooo much better. I had to cut and thread the tang but it all works fine now. I might have a play with how the blade is set soon, but I’m not sure that it will be as much of an advantage as in Epee.
Other Things
I’ve also been trying to keep upto date with other stuff to like Christmas presents, birthday presents and finding out all those bits of information that people want to know…
Here’s hoping for an easier week next week.
Good Hunting
Queen Mary (Home)
Another match another defeat, damnit! But it was a lot closer this time 134-108 I believe, we also managed to win a weapon, Epee 45-44, with a double on the last point!
Our trouble seems to be foil, we always lose that so badly that we never have a chance to make up the ground in the other two weapons. we lost Foil 25-45 in the end and I scored 15 of those points, with 12 against me. Strangely enough I did better in Epee scoring 19 points, for a total of 34. Next week it’s our ‘home’ match against the first team so another loss is on the cards really, although I really think that we can give them a run for their money in places!
We are currently one from bottom in the league with only Hertfordshire below us and they have a better hits difference than us so we must beat them in January - unfortunantley it’s probably going to be on Charlie and I’s 6th Aniversary - so I’m not sure whether I’m going to be able to go! Oh well.
Good Hunting
Fencing St. George Medical (Away)
So this was to be my first away match, and it was in Tooting, London. Not too bad a journey although we did have to get the train there rather than a coach - probably for the best in the end as it meant that we could all do what we wanted afterwards.
The match was meant to start at 2.30pm but it eventually got underway just after three…
…in a squash court…
…yes, a squash court…
…so lets do some elementary mathematics. Squash courts are 9.75m x 6.4m (Apparently), that gives a diagonal of about 11.7. Accounting for the width of a fencing piste at 1.5/2.0 metres that means that the far corners are unusable, so if we’re generous and take a metre off each end that leaves us with a piste 9m long. Piste’s are meant to be 14m long. It’s really hard to fence if you’ve got nowhere to retreat to and even more so when you’re not used to it.
Apart from that we did better overall than last time, coming in at 89-135. We did much better in Epee than before and a tiny bit better in foil. Unfourtuantly we scored slightly less in sabre but overall it was positive.
Good Hunting
Fencing Victory!
We won! I’m not sure of the final result but we won over the three weapons by about three points, that’s close!
I left after foil which we lost 45-33 (By far our best showing in foil so far) because Drew only told us about it at 10.00pm last night so I had arrangements for this afternoon, but we must have clawed all of that defecit back in the other weapons - good job Drew, Ed and James. In some ways it’s cool that we only won by a few points because that means that without me we would have lost… (I’m the foilist in the team).
Anyway there will be celebrations tomorrow at Club Night!
Good Hunting
Fencing and losing again :(
Well we lost again, even with my new socks. It was against the first team though so I don’t feel that bad! We had the lead in Sabre for quite a while but eventually lost 45-35 which wasn’t bad at all. We then lost 45-16 in foil which although worse for the team it was ok for me as I got nine of those points! I even scored six against the first team captain which did not go down hugely well! I left before epee was concluded but we weren’t doing too badly at it.
Good Hunting