Feint-of-Parry

Monday night and in yesterday's class we worked on feint-of-parry to each quadrant and possible responses. There are always three other main parries available (the other three open quadrants) and at least one ceding parry. Kenny, our coach, presented this so clearly and succinctly that I actually can imagine taking advantage of the diversity during real bouts although my attempts during open fencing Monday evening were less than successful. I like it a lot. It's yet another way to introduce and manage complexity in the game.

Also, as I was suiting up, I watched the other fencers in the club. We'd only missed a week because of the Pecos Conference, but I could see distinct and significant improvements and changes in several of the fencers. It could be a very interesting and surprising year for several of them.

And last night, Lynn and I finished watching Desperate Romantics the BBC series drama about the Pre-Raphaelites. I was very fond of it, on a number of levels. Indeed, it's possibly the best BBC series I've seen in years. Rossetti dominates and poor old Burne-Jones (of whose work I'm most fond) receives short shrift. But that's to be expected I guess. A little web research revealed that Ken Russell ("Women in Love," etc.) made a bio-pic about Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal back in the 1960s; I definitely need to check that out.

I also discovered Zoe Keating's music this week which I find I can listen to over and over.

The Burne-Jones painting of Perseus seems like a nice representation of fighting and managing complexity.