Hi!

Spring is here, at last. There’s pear blossom in my garden.

A reminder for those of us north of the Equator that Summer is on its way, and for those down south, a reminder that Spring will come eventually.

As you may recall Swordschool turned 25 last month, and I’ve finally hit ‘publish’ on a blog post about the School’s history, structure, and other things. You may find it interesting:

I’ve managed to update the Wiki with a lot of Vadi in the last few weeks (I may even have completed the Vadi longsword interpretation section by the time this goes out). Check it out here:

There is also a ton of Capoferro stuff and Fiore stuff up there. Have a poke around and share anything you find useful with your friends.

On The Sword Guy podcast: Making seated longsword work, with Ella Rose

Ella Rose has been practicing historical martial arts since 2017. In 2023 she founded Black Cat Historical Fencing with co-founder Shane Scallin, where she teaches dagger, rapier and beginner longsword classes. She has competed across the US and internationally, and she has won medals in multiple weapon categories. Ella is the lead tournament organizer of Iron Gate Exhibition, Benedict's Big Day, and Long Tail.

Ella has worked in many minority-focused spaces, both within historical martial arts and in her career as an illustrator. Having dealt with chronic illness and disability her entire martial arts career, she led the creation of BCHF's seated fencing practice, one of the first of its kind. And in 2025 she organized the first seated longsword tournament, and she aims to continue pushing the HEMA community further towards inclusion for all athletes.

In our conversation we talk about dealing with chronic illness, especially within HEMA, and the adaptations that Ella makes to her training and recovery time.

This is a useful conversation for anyone involved in running a club, or thinking of starting one, because we talk about what to charge students, and the ethos that will help make your club inclusive and welcoming. We talk about the adaptations salles should make so they become places where people can hang out and still be part of the community, even if they are not actively taking part in a session.

Most clubs are not going to be equipped with disability accommodations already in place, so we discuss how coaches can support students with different needs, and what a club can do to actively show that people with disabilities are welcome.

We also hear about the fascinating process of adapting historical martial arts to seated fencing: how to adapt the system, how to create suitable seats and where to position people, and how a seated fencer can fence against someone standing up.

The rest of this email gets pretty heavy, so if you need cheering up, stick with the pear blossom. If you have the spoons, read on.

My mother is dying. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months. This was probably obvious from what I wrote last time, about dashing up to Scotland to see her, and that I’ve postponed a slew of podcast interviews and the planned Angelo smallsword video shoot.

Euphemism and denial have their place, but I do prefer plain talking, and facing things head-on. Here she is with my unreasonably tall nephew, at church on Easter Sunday. She was just well enough to go.

One major benefit of engaging with historical martial arts (at least the way I do it) is that we are constantly confronted with our own mortality, and by extension everyone else’s. Everybody dies, some sooner than others, despite what various billionaires and youtubers seem to think.

So this is a disaster, but a natural one, one we saw coming (she was diagnosed with stage four cancer four years ago). The world will change shape entirely for me and my family, but we will adapt. When my wife lost her mother, my mum told her “you don’t get over it, you just get used to it”. And I think she’s right.

My perspective on death was set when I was 17, and my best friend’s sister, who was a few months younger than me, dropped dead of a brain aneurism with no warning at all. Here one minute, gone the next. Hers was the first funeral I ever attended, and it has put every other death in perspective. Losing my grandma the following year was awful, but a different kind of loss entirely.

Things to be grateful for include:

• I actually love my mum and she loves me. I once turned up at a friend’s house and she told me her mother had just died but she didn’t care because she hadn’t spoken to her in 30 years. And she really wasn’t bothered. Grief is the price we pay for love, and it’s totally worth it.
• We’ve known this was coming for a while, and have taken advantage of the time.
• We have access to state-of-the-art healthcare, which kept her alive (and teaching piano) this long, and is now making a dreadful process as painless as possible.
• My mum has had a good run. She’s 85, has been teaching piano for forty years, and retired on March 23rd this year. She has three kids, and seven grandkids, all of whom have come to see her since we got the news.
• She still has all her marbles. A bit scatty from chemo-brain perhaps, but she’s 100% herself, and able to make clear decisions about things she cares about. Warming up croissants in the oven, not the microwave, for example.
• My brother, my sister, and I are all doing well enough professionally that we can take as much time off as we need to look after her while she’s still with us, and to deal with the aftermath when she’s gone. This would be so much harder if we had to be careful not to take too much compassionate leave because we might get fired.

Speaking of which, I’ll be working as and when I feel up to it, or have time, given that I’m prioritising looking after my mum over everything else. All deadlines are suspended, and while I hope there will be newsletters and podcast episodes, and I’ll make some progress on the Vadi Companion, the Angelo project, and the wiki (huge chunks of it are now at the “copy this, paste that” stage, so require time and attention but no creative juice), I’m making no promises.

Here’s irony for you. My mum is the most reliable replier to this newsletter by far. It startled me the first time she did it, as I wasn’t aware she was on the list. I’ll miss getting those replies.

Winter is long, dark and dreary, but the flowers do come in the spring.

yours,

Guy
​