One of the highlights of spring 2011 was taking the England youth team to Wroclaw for the Challenge Wratislavia competition - an annual event apparently designed to remind the English and to a lesser extent the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish that their countries are fencing backwaters.
I like Wroclaw a lot, and enjoyed the trips despite the burdens of management - having to wear garish polyester for days on end, learning all their names, knowing where to get a stomach pumped, who's hiding injuries, who needs loud support and who appreciates a quiet word, knowing where everybody should be and so on - it was always an exhausting event physically and mentally, but also hugely enjoyable. This was the year that the England fencers kept getting drawn in the elimination rounds against each other and their friends and rivals from the rest of the UK: plenty of very enjoyable tension but a bit unfortunate in terms of results.
I also think it was this year that saw me attend a Tindersticks gig in Manchester cathedral the night before, grab 3 hours' sleep in the worst hotel I've ever seen, then take the 2 a.m. coach down to Stansted, enduring the drunken chanting of a racist from Donegal the entire way. 'If you sit next to me I'll get Aids', she informed a black man when he boarded, and carried on in that vein the entire way. Ugh. It was also the year 3 of us in team management shared an enormous room. One of us literally couldn't stop talking no matter who blatant the cues given were, so my colleague and I organised a rota for who would endure the chuntering until our colleague would fall asleep. A text would then be sent declaring the room safe for repose.
Anway, here's a little bit of Wroclaw and the Challenge, taken on my then new camera and I gradually worked out what it could do - I got a bit more adventurous later on.
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| a flèche from Jessica Summers |
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| An unorthodox approach by Kristjan Archer |
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| …and the aftermath |
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| and the celebration |
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| Libby Jones leaps out of the way in the women's sabre |
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| Two England sabreuses meet |
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| Ingerland on tour |
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| One of my favourite windows |
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| And a favourite bit of glasswork |
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