Memories of The Marble Factory and Sensei George
Andrews, Chapter Two
I had left university full of the heady enthusiasm
for work in the big city. I had always abhorred the idea of having to
live in London, but I confess to having felt a sense of hidden excitement
at the prospect of actually moving to the capital. I had intended to move
back to Sheffield to continue my training with Sensei Andy Barker and
to enrol on an outdoor pursuit course with a university friend. We had
discovered that if you were registered unemployed, it was possible to
get the course funded by the local council. It seems that the old left
leanings of the labour government in Sheffield were still very much intact,
despite, or perhaps because of, almost two decades of staunch conservative
government. Sheffield had suffered terribly under this administration.
The privatisation of national industry and the literal destruction of
the coal industry, on which Sheffield had been built, left a brutal scar
on both the city and the communities of which it was composed. I loved
Sheffield. I had been a highly enthusiastic rock climber at the time and
had spent much of my first two years engaged in this pursuit, almost to
the exclusion of my studies. But the problem with climbing, aside from
its addictive nature, is that it takes up so much time. Even with the
rock an easily accessible 20 minutes away from where I was living, just
going out for a few hours would take up half a day. But for a first year
student, missing lectures was an occupational hazard and so I thought
nothing of it. There is an aspect of climbing that is however ultimately
addictive and it was into this that I fell, albeit at my own relatively
novice level. Most climbing is relatively safe. Ropes and mechanical protection
mean that you may fall but usually you stop within a few seconds, your
inexorable ground rush being brought to a gentle and spongy arrest by
the rope and a wide-eyed 'belayer'. Climbers like to flirt with the idea
of danger, exploring its compulsive rewards and through a process of amelioration,
they are gradually seduced. Loosing the encumbrance of ropes and climbing
free, 'soloing' as it is called, is a hugely liberating experience, but
at the end of my second year, I felt that I was perhaps pushing my luck
a little too far, both in the risks I was taking and the lectures I was
missing. It was time to knuckle down to some work and Karate provided
a perfect opportunity to continue training without sacrificing my studies.
I enjoyed my final year so much that I wanted
to stay, but after returning from the US, I felt that compulsion to make
something of my life and the big city beckoned. I must confess, that the
prospect of becoming a full time student of Sensei's had a large influence
on my willingness to relocate to London. I remember sitting in Sensei
Andy's backyard with his wife Margaret talking about the move and reflecting
on the fact that a previous student, Jason, had also moved down, partly
because of work, partly to train with Sensei George. I know that while
they were never going to try and talk me out of my decision, they were
circumspect about it. Though they never said it, I sense now that they
anticipated exactly what would happen, that I would grow unhappy about
living in London but that training with Sensei George would keep me there
far longer than I planned. How right they were! There is a compulsion
about it and within two years of being there I was already resolved that
I would leave within a year, at least until I gained my black belt. Then
when I'd gained my black belt, it was Nidan that became the next goal
and so on until eventually, I'd been in London for eight years.
I got a job selling advertising space in a magazine. Not a particularly
glamorous job but I figured that having a job was half the battle. I was
based in Farringdon, just around the corner from the offices of The Guardian
newspaper and a stones throw from Smithfield Meat Market. I mention this
only because this is where Sensei himself first started work. I think
our experiences couldn't have been further apart. At the tender age of
16 he entered the market where he laboured, each day carrying some 200
pig carcasses, borne across his shoulders. I do not know whether Sensei's
shoulders were as broad back then as they are now, but I have no doubt
that his remarkable structure, owes at least something to his work at
the meat market. There is also no doubt that he drew much inspiration
from the boxers that worked and trained there, using the pig carcasses
as punch bags, testing their punching power against the thick fat covered
slabs of meat. Sensei always says that the boxers would test their strength
by their ability to break the ribs of the pig carcass through two inches
of fat. If they could do it here, they knew that any unfortunate opponent,
so meanly covered by comparison, was going to suffer equally. I remember
thinking the first time I heard this, that the rather stylised scene in
the film Rocky, where Sylvester Stalone enthusiastically pounds a side
of beef, was perhaps not quite so far fetched.
I can't remember how I got to the Elephant and Castle though I think it
was by tube. I would have taken the circle line from Farringdon to Bank
and then changed to the Northern Line, which is the oldest tube line in
London and at the time, was certainly living up to this fact. The Elephant
and Castle is a major intersection for south London. It is ostensibly
one huge roundabout, burrowed with a maze of subways that are inhabited
by the destitute, the homeless and always the lonely. If it is the heart,
then the Old Kent Road, Walworth Road and Kennington Park Road are its
main arteries, pumping a continuous stream of traffic, the life blood
of London.
It is fed from the north by St George's Road, London Road and Newington
causeway, leading from London Bridge and Waterloo. Approaching the Elephant
and Castle from these roads leads you directly to the roundabout itself,
entry to which requires a strong heart, steady nerve and the courage of
your own convictions. On a bike it is the ground onto which a fool will
rush where angels fear to tread. Swinging past the entrance to the Old
Kent Road, resisting the temptation to wonder at the deconstructionist/cubist
inspired monstrosity of a building that is now flats but was once the
head quarters of the DHSS (designed by Erno Goldfinger, an architect of
enough reputation and acclaim for it to be a listed building!), you must
navigate the maniacal traffic to exit next left. Now you are outside the
Elephant and Castle itself, immediately opposite the Tabernacle, a rather
ostentatious Greco-Roman style building with huge fluted pillars of stone
holding aloft a canopied roof with large double fronted doors that do
not look designed to be opened save for those of the most high office.
It is entirely at odds with its surroundings. The shopping centre that
constitutes the main part of the Elephant and Castle, is home to an assortment
of market traders, hawking anything from a imitation Levis to home made
candles and bootleg CD's. You can buy deep fried plantins and jambalaya
here from a rickety shack that sits next to the entrance. It looks like
it would never pass a health inspection in its wildest dreams but after
training, this is the farthest thing from your mind.
To get to the Marble Factory you needed to take a bus from the Elephant
and Castle. You could walk, it was probably only 20 minutes but since
half of the hundred a minute busses went that way it was as easy to jump
on one of them and ride down. I had been given a list of the bus numbers
that I could get on and so after exiting the tube, I shuffled into line.
I didn't have to wait long and discovered that the bus I would need to
get me back to my new home in South Norwood (very close to Crystal Palace),
would also take me past the dojo.
The children's class was still going and since the changing
rooms were at the back of the dojo, I removed my shoes and stepped through
the translucent strips of plastic that hung across the entrance. Bowing
and announcing 'Onegai Shimasu' I then stepped carefully down the back
of the dojo to get changed. Sensei merely glanced at me and nodded faint
approval.
In the Marble Factory, the dojo was laid out lengthways to the entrance.
Thus it was longer than it was wide at its entrance and the front was
effectively on the wall to the right of the entrance. Down the centre
of the room a row of old iron pillars, painted white, provided natural
obstacles to be negotiated. The right hand wall faced vaguely east and
so was the wall towards which we faced for the line up and bow. Its brick
work was rough and exposed and the windows opaque with age. I understand
that at the time Sensei moved into the premises, these windows did not
exist and putting them in was one of the many jobs that needed doing before
training at the dojo could start.
The west wall was of white plaster and was always cold to the touch, even
in summer. It too had a row of recessed, opaque windows, with an old lead
lattice structure. The top part opened on a cantilever with a rusty ring
that one pulled down to release the catch, allowing the window to rotate
inwards. It was heavy because of its lead structure and would easily fall
open too quickly. On the left hand side of this wall a large mirror was
mounted, stretching from floor to ceiling and approximately three metres
long. To the right of this, two Makiwara stood, one of firm stiffness,
the other more supple. On the right side of the wall, immediately next
to the ladies changing room, was a large pile of mats and to the left
of this two steel radial tires were bolted at right angles so that one
could kick mawashi geri with the shin striking into their radius.
Changing rooms for men and women were accessed through the north wall.
These were small but functional though they would get crowded when weekend
courses were held. Finding enough floor space on which to balance and
get changed was always part of the fun at these courses. On the east wall
hung images of Chojun Miyagi and Jinan Shinzato and on it was painted
an image of the deity Busaganashi. Leaning against the wall at its very
centre was the Kenkon and it was in front of this that Sensei would stand
for the bow. Behind him formed two lines of students, black and brown
belts in the front line with the remaining kyu grades behind. I remember
thinking how long the line of black belts was.
My first time was certainly an initiation. You can train hard at one club
and reach a given standard, but it always feels so much harder when you
move and train somewhere else. Its as though all your strength and fitness
leave you, you forget everything you learnt and even the most basic of
techniques becomes a challenge. At least this is how I felt at the time.
There is a routine at Sensei's dojo that has not changed since the demise
of the Marble Factory. We had heard about this from his students on courses
and he had talked of it as well. Though these exercises performed at the
start of the class were routine, actually doing them was anything but.
Sensei Andy had adopted star jumps about 7 months before I finished training
with him and we had begun incorporating them into the class, perhaps doing
20-30 as part of a wider set of exercises. We performed them enthusiastically
but found them hard. But on this evening, my first night training, I found
that doing 100 was a completely different proposition. I knew they were
coming but I didn't know how many we would do. The lesson began with the
same routine, 10 minutes running before forming two lines down the outside
of the dojo and facing each other, Yudansha one side, kyu grades the other.
Sensei began the count and the black belts jumped, squatted and stretched
in font of us. Sensei counted 20 and then invited us to do the same. Of
course I was eager to try and impress. My karate was shit but I at least
knew my fitness was OK, or at least I thought it was. I raced along eager
to keep up and perhaps even slightly outpace Sensei's count. It was hard
but I managed it and began to feel that perhaps these star jumps weren't
so bad after all. At the second set of 20, I began to feel my lungs burn
and my whole body grew heavier. Making the jump back onto my feet from
the ground was getting much harder and I wasn't quite able to keep up
with the count towards the end. I still didn't really know how many we
had to do until one of the other students had a quiet word in my ear and
told me that I didn't need to be superman, that we were going to do 100,
that it wasn't easy but that it didn't matter if we didn't do every single
one. If they had said this to me at the end of the first set I would have
paid not the least bit of attention. As it was, by the end of the second
set, I was glad to hear these words. The next set of 20 felt like I was
doing them with lead boots on. Between 60 and 80 I felt as though the
world was going to end and perhaps managed to do 12 of the 20 counted.
I don't even remember the final set. Looking back now it feels as though
I am making rather a mountain out of a mole hill, but they are hard and
anyone who says otherwise is either lying or not trying hard enough. But
their biggest challenge is that they are really only part of the warm
up, you still have to train for an hour after you've finished them.
My progress at the Marble Factory felt immeasurably
slow over the following 12 months. Where I had felt relatively fit and
strong before, I was now relegated to the ranks of the gasping and wheezing.
Although 100 star jumps is not a huge leap on from doing 30, especially
when doing 30 felt comfortable, star jumps are like climbing a hill that
gets steeper and steeper the closer you get to the top. I may well have
found doing 30 comfortable, but the next 30 got so much harder and the
30 after that was agony. For an average person, it probably takes upwards
of one year of consistent training in this way to get to the point where
they can comfortably manage 100. I found that my progress was measured
by how many I star jumps I could do before I could no longer keep to the
pace and every time I managed to extend this slightly, it became even
harder to move forward. Finally, when I was able to keep to the count
the whole way through, the next challenge was to get fit enough to do
this without being still completely spent at the end. As I said, you still
have to train once you've finished.
Now the routine has evolved slightly. Running, 100 star jumps, 100 sit
ups (these were always in the syllabus), and then 100 push ups. Sensei
has always been critical of people who cheat on push-ups and it is easy
to do. To prevent this, Sensei allows us to do them on our knees. This
has the effect to make the overall push-up slightly easier since you eliminate
the need to keep the whole body quite so rigid. But it also isolates the
triceps far more effectively and encourages you to do the exercise more
as it should be. But on my first night, the push-ups were not required,
not that I would have been remotely capable of doing them if they had
been.
To be honest, I really don't remember much more about my first time after
the star jumps. Most of my first year is the same. I found it very hard
adjusting to working full time and training in the evenings. Often I would
feign sleep on the bus as it rolled by the dojo before making its way
back to South Norwood. Although I thought my time at Sheffield had prepared
me well, I realise now that I hadn't really been training. Of course,
this is no reflection on Sensei Andy whatsoever. Indeed, within 3 months
of joining Sensei in London he invited me to grade, indicating the excellence
of Sensei Andy's teaching. At the time I left him I was 5th kyu. My first
grading with Sensei George was on a Wednesday evening and it is one of
the few events from my first year that I remember vividly. Yes it was
hard but I was still hugely motivated and eager to impress. In addition,
the exuberance of my training and achievements in Sheffield spurred me
on. When it came to Kata, I concluded that for 4th Kyu I would only need
to perform up to Saifa. But when Sensei asked me to perform Seiyunchin,
I became flushed with the prospect of perhaps grading to brown belt. I
think this excitement carried me through so that the mawashi geri's to
a pad followed by 60 star jumps felt OK. Indeed I was rewarded with brown
belt. With the grading finished, we lined up and Sensei called out the
results. I remember very distinctly that I was last person to have their
result announced and Sensei paused for more than a minute before asking
me how old I was (I was 22) and then how long I had been training. He
commented that I was very strong and that I had a great future ahead of
me if I kept my training up. It is awful really to think that only now
can I fully appreciate the magnitude of what he was saying to me and even
worse that in my ignorance of the time, I probably squandered that compliment
over the next 2 years. He thought for an even longer time before finally
announcing that he was awarding me brown belt. Mentally and spiritually,
I do not believe that I deserved this. It is a testimony to the quality
of Sensei Andy's teaching that physically I was at all deserving of this
grade.
And yet I left the dojo that night flush with pride before spending the
next 2 years struggling to even find the motivation to turn up to training
let alone train hard.
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