Dagger days with the LLA.

With perfect timing it seems, we spent last night covering dagger and to add to the thumb toward tip vs pick debate. No, they both exist in medieval play, and most systems had manners of dealing with both.

However yesterday we dealt with pseudo Doebringer that, only uses pick. The reason that I chose to take the class through this form is that it dismisses the lack of cutting ability argument with early knife forms (again made somewhat more important by it's dating with the scheme of fencing treatises, 1389 bloody early).

The first play is your standard disarm, the left handed anti clockwise rotation against the pick grip. But then it gets interesting.

To counter this disarm the exact methodology I would expect from modern knifeplay is used, the shearing and stripping rip, or pressing cut to ruin the defending limb. We covered all the other aspects of the play as well from the attempt to get behind to the common sense don't kid your self that if you aren't doing this full tilt his won't turn you by your nose for sentry kill (don't think he isn't going to try and *&%$ you up while you try this).Obviously this meant we had to don masks and try it against a bull rushing, bowling bastard of an assault, to get the timing of the counter, just so. Also we had a brief run through of Mair's second knife play, which is...fantastic. We have one more week of the knife then back to sword and buckler.

So many things.

Already this year has got of to a cracking start. Not only have we been featured on A.F.P. but also have appeared on the Islam Channel and the BBC's Secrets of the Castle.

I really hate this outfit.

The BBC episode had me teaching two presenters how to fight with spear against spear, and although I ended up teaching them long spear form for safety's sake, I was very pleased with how it came across and how well they absorbed what I said.

General training has been wonderful, with the Monday, Wednesday and Friday classes on waiting list only, in order to make sure we don't get too crowded and so everyone gets the attention they need.

If you want to get in at the earliest opportunity contact us at londonlongsword@gmail.com. We still have some space in the Thursday spear and dussack class in Crystal Palace.