It is with great regret that I must pass on the news that Pierre Chassang Sensei died on 29th April 2013.
I'm not going to go into the details of Pierre's history and achievements here, there are rough details of his history available on the Shobu Aikido website and a fine eulogy by his student and close friend Philipe Voarino on the Takamusu Aiki Intercontinental site.
For those of us who...
There was a Timewatch programme on BBC4 last night. Unfortunately at 10:00 pm so a bit late for those of us who like an early night with work in the morning - fortunately it's available on BBC iPlayer.
If you didn't manage to catch the program live then do check it out on BBC iPlayer. Ok the episode was called "Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: The Rise of Martial Arts in Britain" which means of course that that bl**dy awful song was played in it. I reckon that it's one piece of music (sic) which every martial artist loathes - and that includes kung-fu practitioners.
No mention of Aikido in the programme - I suppose we'...
I've had to cancel rather a lot of classes recently which is all down to the size of the club at the moment.
Basically there's really been only two of us training for the past couple of months so if either of us can't make it for one reason or another the session gets cancelled.
The club is taking a break for a couple of weeks at the end of March so I doubt that we'll be running properly again until at least April.
If you've been thinking of coming along with a view to joining the club you have my apologies about the current situation and suggest you try contacting us again in April
We've been hit with heavy snow and freezing conditions here in Norwich so we've been cancelling classes on the basis that people are not going to want to travel unless they really have to. Additionally the bus services have been reduced to main roads only and that's when they're runing at all.
We'll be back when the weather improves 
.
The bus service between Norwich and New Costessey is now the 23.
For some reason known only to those in charge the number of the service that runs from Norwich city centre to the Costessey centre has has been switched from 19 to 23. It seems to be the same route, at least at this end but, in the interests of a "leaner and fitter economy" or something the number has been changed.
Owing to a combination of various circumstances the Fudokai is taking a sabbatical until the New Year.
Like so many other clubs and organisations we've been hit hard by the 'current economic situation' (don't you just hate that term).
We've had members who've been made redundant or whose spouses were made redundant and are out of work or have had to take lower paying, less-skilled jobs, members who are having to work increased hours etc. It's meant that some have had to cease training as part of a belt-tightening exercise and others simply don't have the time so attendances have plummeted.
To add on to that I have a back problem which is simply refusing to go away which means that I'm...
Well, we're now successfully transferred to a new hosting company.
Mostly the move has been uneventful. I put a copy of the site on the new host and amended /etc/hosts on my PC to point to the new IP address and tested the site as best I could.
After a week or so I got the old hosting company to change the IPS tags and the DNS entries changed and everything seems to have moved Ok. The only minor hitch being that some of my emails got delayed but I don't believe we lost any.
I'll leave the site for a couple of weeks and then make the upgrade to Drupal 7. This is the main reason for the transfer to a new host. Drupal 7 requires a more recent release on PHP than was available on the old host. The old host had promised an upgrade but after two slippages and still no...
We will be changing hosts for this web site in the near future so the site may not be available for a short period of time.
Additionally emails sent using the contacts form or using one of the fudokai.org.uk addresses could go astray during the move.
This site uses the Drupal CMS and needs to be upgraded from version 6 to version 7 which also requires an up-to-date version of PHP which our current host has taken too long to implement, forcing the change of host.
Owing to unforeseen circumstances I will not be available to take some of the usual classes in June.
As we currently don't have another qualified instructor I'm afraid I am having to cancel the classes which woul normally be held on Monday the 11th and Monday 18th June.
Things have come to gether at rather short notice so I've not had time to contact Malcolm at Fakenhan to se if he or Robert could stand in for them so I've simply cancelled the hire of the Owen Barnes room for those two dates.
Unfortunately it means that, with the Bank Holiday in June as well, we'll now only have one class in June, on Monday 25th June.
Students are strongly recommended to make the trip out to Fakenham for their Tuesday evening class in the...
I have no further details at present but I suggest that you check the entry on the BAB web site which gives a contact email address.
For once the course is somewhere not too difficult to get to from Norwich and announced far enough ahead for ordinary working people with families to plan for.
I strongly recommend that anyone who has an interest in teaching Aikido attend. The course is not onerous and it's about teaching not about aikido so you don't have to worry...
There's been a leak in the roof of the changing rooms we use at the back of the Owen Barnes room which has put them out of action. I wouldn't bother to report on this but they've now been out of use for about 3 months.
I've talked to the council and apprently they've been messed about by the insurers and can't get on with the work until it's all approved.
I suppose that this is all part of the "leaner and fitter economy" we're all living in now but, in times past, facilities like this would have just been fixed immediately in the knowledge that the funds would be available from central government who was basically acting as the insurer for the council. Now it's all been farmed out to private insurance companies it's all supposed to be so much more efficient.
So,...
Another excellent course mentored by George Forbes (6th Dan) and hosted by the Fakenham club.
The real advantage of the SAUK courses is in the quality of the instruction. It's real instruction in solid AIkido basics, not lots of fancy techniques in attempting to impresss or provide amusement.
Unfortunately we didn't have many people from the Norwich group at the course owing to various reasons, such as work and injuries. Something of a shame as this is the only scheduled local SAUK this year. The nearest other courses will be in Sheffield - apart from that, it's the long haul up to Barrow-In-Furness.
Copyright © Alan Prescott 2008,2009,2010,2011,2012
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