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Hi!

Firstly thanks to everyone who sent me questions to answer in the upcoming dagger book. I’ve answered every email I received, so if you’ve sent a question but haven’t heard back please send it again.

This book is part of the From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice series, so has my transcription, translation, and interpretation of every one of the dagger plays in the Getty Ms, with a video clip of how I do it in practice, as well as discussion on aspects of the interpretation process. Just to be clear, it doesn’t cover how to train, or how to teach these things (I have other materials for that, such as The Medieval Dagger book, and online courses on both Fiore and Vadi’s dagger content, and a book on how to teach).

But if you have any questions that you’d want this book to answer, feel free to send them over. I can’t promise to include them, but I will if I can.

Questions received so far include “why are there no cuts shown with the dagger?”, and “why does Fiore show defences where you grip with the whole hand (including the thumb), which risks the thumb being broken?” and “what’s the underlying strategic framework behind Fiore’s dagger plays?”

The Sword Guy rebooting…

In other news… I have a podcast interview next week, which means yes! the podcast is coming back. Slowly… but I expect to restart it in September. If you’d like to be interviewed on the show, feel free to pitch me. A good pitch includes the following:

• a five-line bio with your background and experience
• a short list of topics that you want to talk about that you think might be interesting for the audience.

If there’s anyone you know who you think would be a good fit for the show, feel free to either nominate them (please include links so I can easily find them online; I’ll ask for you to introduce us if I want to get in touch), or forward this email so they can pitch me themselves.

Mystery woodwork project revealed!

Here it is in situ:

It's a hat rack! I have a thing for fedoras, as you can see:

Only my mum figured it out. Well done mum!

What I’m Reading

I stumbled across Natasha Pulley’s The Mars House, and it’s brilliant. In a world falling apart from climate change, the colony on Mars which has evolved into its own civilization (technically a Chinese dominion, but with its own legislature, and genetic modifications to the cold and low gravity) allows “Earthstrong” (ie people still adapted to the Earth’s gravity) to come as underpaid grunt labour. The main character is the former primo ballerino of the Royal Ballet, and the main antagonist is the sinister Senator Gale… there’s plenty of plot curves (not really twists), and thoughtful treatment of the refugee issue (on the one hand, they’ll die if you don’t help them; on the other (on Mars at least) the habitat is severely challenging as it is, so everyone could die if you let too many people in… what to do?). My favourite bit though was the mammoths. On Mars.

I liked it enough to immediately start reading Pulley’s first book, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. It’s very good, similarly weird, but a very different story. A Home Office telegraph clerk becomes friends with a weird Japanese watchmaker who turns out to remember the future. While Fenians are setting bombs in London, using clockwork… Great fun.

Which set me up to get back into Claire North’s works, this time Touch, about a consciousness that can switch into different bodies, by touch, being hunted by an organisation that (kind of understandably) takes issue with people’s bodies being taken over. While the consciousness itself is hunting a serial killer. It’s slightly reminiscent of David Mitchell’s work (like The Bone Clocks), in that consciousnesses can transfer from body to body. It’s brilliantly written, and very hard to put down.

cheers,

Guy