The first part of my personal history which I started writing about four years ago and is still in the process of being finished, the events are as I can remember them but I suppose discrepancies happen when you get to my age.
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The first part of my personal history which I started writing about four years ago and is still in the process of being finished, the events are as I can remember them but I suppose discrepancies happen when you get to my age. |
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This potted history of my Wing Chun career I am afraid will always be a sideways, backward and forward journey, just to keep it as short as possible. I have met many people at different times and sometimes they have become frequent visitors to my ‘path’, to try and write a linear account of my Wing Chun life and times is a bit beyond me, my natural instinct to go off on tangents is well known to my students or any of those who have attended one of my seminars. What follows is my account of the years up to today, the hows, why’s and wherefore of what has become “My Path to Wing Chun”. From the first day till now I will try to cover the events that I have been part of and the people I have encountered. As with Shaun Rawcliffe I apologise if I miss anyone out, but if you know me at all then you can always put it down to alcoholic memory loss. Shaun, I think, just prefers to forget about me at times to pretend I don’t exist, it is a common theme amongst many of my acquaintances in the Wing Chun community. Just joking Shaun, but it serves you right for not listing me as a friend in that magazine article. Will be referring Shaun a few times as he has been there on a number of amusing occasions and I will let him sweat on what I shall be saying! All of my tales are all true as I remember them, though if there are any who disagree and would like me to revise my personal history and can remind me of the facts in better detail or would like to add more names to the list of those from my past I welcome any information. Remembering names has never been my forte. The usual first question asked of a martial artist is “why did you begin training?” and the assumption is mainly due to bullying at school, however, though like many I suffered bullying at school I had already come to terms with the violence that was inherent part of daily life at Highfield Comprehensive School. The reason for my initial interest was my friend Steve Flaherty, who sat next to me in my fourth year maths class, he used to talk about this style of Kung Fu called Wing Chun, and how he trained at the Whitehall Road Infant School in Gateshead and decided to give it a try for no other reason other than curiosity. I remember my first lesson for not a rather unpleasant episode, which is more surprising in that it wasn’t the reason for not going back for a second lesson. The school was led by Sifu Alan Lamb, who though technically was my first instructor at the time he spent a lot of time travelling to further his own Wing Chun knowledge and I think at the time was in America, but my memory of the details of that time are sketchy, it could have been Hong Kong. I will come back to this point later, but back to my memorable first lesson! The class was being taken by Gary, a light heavy weight, full contact kickboxer, and he decided that sparring was the order of the day and the class was split into pairs and made to spar for two minute rounds. The vivid memory for me was of the bout matched with a ginger-haired lad who had been training for over two years. I was standing there not knowing how to form any sort of fighting stance, let alone defensive techniques when with all the time in the world using my virgin abilities as cover he took one step toward me and kicked me straight in the gonads! As a first lesson it did teach me quite a lot and has developed an almost psychic response when my groin is exposed, I get an almost audible scream from that region telling my conscious mind that they are under threat. The other thing it taught me was that a kick in the testicles is not the ‘cure all’ that some say, it took several seconds to have any effect and I managed to finish the bout before collapsing with the engulfing sickness that such a strike causes. Well I endured the rude initiation and trained Mondays and Wednesdays for the next few years, as I have already mentioned Alan Lamb was hardly there around this time and though Garry was one of the instructors, who I consider the main teacher of my Wing Chun at that time was Alec Au. Alec was a good guy, who was not only intelligent but very able. At that time apart from Steve Flaherty who I have already mentioned there was his brother Brian, Kevin Steel, John and Alan Agar, Steve Laidler who is still a good friend but did not train much after I left to concentrate on my ‘A’ levels, two brothers Kevin and Steve (aka Bruce) are some of the ones I remember. I remember those days of training being more fitness orientated; out of a two hour class over an hour and a half would be exercises, press-ups on various parts of the hands and wrist, sit-ups, squats and any number of other things just before the stretching took over and toward the end about half an hour of learning and then a warm down session. It was toward the end of my time at Whitehall Road that a Choy Lee Fut instructor came over to live in North East from Hong Kong called Edmund Ng and took us for a few sessions that were interesting but not my cup of tea. It was 1976 and I had reached Chum Kiu level, then studying for my ‘A’ levels took precedence and going out drinking with my brother and his mates (one being a certain James Bradford aka Jimmy Nail), from this point my Wing Chun was very much a personal thing, practising the forms and turning techniques, but no instructor input. I went to Royal Holloway College, London University 1977 and quickly made friends with a guy called Tony West, a madman from Leicester who had black belts in a couple of styles and a bit of an animal, played second row in the rugby team whereas I was a mere winger. He was karate based and we used to spar quite frequently along with another lad whose name eludes me for the moment. I tried the karate school at college but could not get into it, so just maintained my ‘personal’ approach to training. In 1978-9 I was introduced to Aikido by a very great man by the name of Jim Elkin, he was 6th Dan in Aikido, Judo and Jiu Jitsu, and he used to come to the college to give classes through the term time. It was such a pleasure meeting and discussing martial arts with him he was truly a MASTER, quiet, noble, a gentle man and a gentleman. We would have some good conversations and I would relate how I felt there were similarities in Wing Chun and Aikido. The only downside of the classes was the lower brown belts etc who took the class in his absence and had neither his ability nor personality and who introduced me to the strange allegiance of Japanese martial arts and purple nylon underwear! He would also talk about the mystical side of the martial arts, he told me of a Japanese friend who could ‘talk’ to his plants, sit in his garden and he would get a feeling of what was either negative or positive, if a pest was present what plant to be placed in the garden to neutralise the problem; he also related to how he suffered from a circulatory problem and it at one time threatened his legs to the point that doctors wanted to amputate, but he refused and through herbal methods saved his legs and he remained healthy. He had a great sense of humour, he would always be relating to funny situations throughout his life and mainly Aikido. There are two that spring to mind; firstly, one of his students was giving a demonstration to the police about the benefits of Aikido in controlling prisoners, taking a ‘volunteer’ from the audience he proceeded to get them in a wrist lock and make them dance around the room, up on their tiptoes and down with their nose to the floor. The poor embarrassed victim was no other than Geoff Capes who at the time was still an Olympic athlete. The second was more to do with his skill in Shiatsu and knowledge of pressure points, when giving a seminar on pressure points he related how in the question time after a session there was always someone who would ask if it was true that there is a point that stimulates an erection in men, to which he would reply yes and to demonstrate at this particular point used a long suffering student who was six foot four and whose ethnicity already carried a reputation related to that body part, and who after the demonstration had difficulty concealing his embarrassment! I was saddened when I heard that he had died just after the filming of the ‘Way of the Warrior’ series on TV and was unable to do the voiceover for his part. I will never forget his sincerity and the aura that surrounded him as I said to start truly a master and truly a great man who made a deep impression on me as a person not just a martial artist I still think of him and always pass on to my students his wisdom and humility. After University I managed a rock band for a while down in London and while down there started looking for a Wing Chun school, I found Simon Lau’s school advertised and went in search of the church hall he was teaching from. When I arrived I was greeted initially with lots of Scandinavian magazine/newspaper articles and then Simon came out of his office, I explained myself and he called a lad from inside the gym and told him to take me around and that was the last I saw of him, the student told me there was not many students who had been training long. I left, feeling that I was not considered important to talk to personally, I never returned. On returning home in 1982 I looked, without success, for the club that the students (which I was an insignificant one) started when they got fed up with Alan only turning up to get enough money to go off again on his own ‘Path to Wing Chun’, the North East Kung Fu Association I think was the name we came up with, but the memories, as I have said are not 100 %. It was January ’83 when I was put back on my ‘Path to Wing Chun’ when my father spotted an advert in a local paper for Wing Chun at the Self Defence Centre, Carliol Square Newcastle. The instructor was called Alan Chan and he made me an offer I could not refuse! I performed my forms for him and he said they were fine, then he told me how his most senior student had just died in a motorbike accident and if I wanted I could take over as an assistant and not have to pay or my classes, to which I replied positively and so began training 7 days a week. In August, Alan stopped turning up at the SDC to supervise the classes and when I bumped into him on the street he told me he had lost interest in Wing Chun and that he had taken up playing squash, also he had a new girlfriend, so I could be the Wing Chun instructor at the Centre. Knowing my lack of knowledge was too great to even consider myself an instructor I began the search for someone to teach me, so that I could maintain the classes that were already ongoing and give the students a depth of Wing Chun that I did not have. Looking back through the martial arts magazines in the reception of the SDC I picked up the July issue of Fighters, which had Samuel Kwok as the main feature. I was impressed immediately by the article and contacted Fighters by phone and they gave me his address. I wrote him a letter from my heart (which for years after he used to show to people, one to embarrass me but secondly to show how dedicated people can be. I hope!), I was then invited down to his home in Elswick, near Blackpool, to talk about it as there was an instructor meeting and I could get to meet some of his students. It was after this meeting that I was invited to become an ‘indoor student’. Present at his home were as I remember; Kevin Frost and Dave Carnell from Stoke, Brian Hook and Martin Brierley from Leeds, John Higginson from Manchester, Bob Deakin from Blackpool. From that point I used to travel down every weekend for training, initially due to the lack of funds I used to hitch there and back, then, when the classes grew I became a regular on the Primrose bus and the Black Bull in Kirkby Stephen where the bus used to stop for half an hour. So began what I consider as my real beginning to my ‘Path to Wing Chun’ as I not only had secured the back-up for my students but a true Sifu (teacher father) in Samuel Kwok and what I consider to be one of the best instructors in the Wing Chun world. Although at that time I did not know the full system I had been honest at all times and my students were happy in the knowledge that once I had completed the system it would be at least available at some point in the future. The other martial arts being taught at the same time at the Self Defence Centre were Shotokan Karate, Sensei Ron Armstrong, 3rd Dan at the time, Tae Kwon Do, the instructor was George Howe, this then became Tukido, as he was affiliated to Master Teh, Judo, Atemi Jiu Jitsu by Geoff Bates (who also goes by Goff Bates and unbelievably advertised himself as Master Bates on all the posters, call me sad but I think I would have used the Sensei term being Japanese based rather than setting myself up for a easy cheap shot). The facilities were also used by individuals who just wanted to use training equipment, a boxer by the name of Howard Mills who was getting back into training and would come into the gym in the lunchtimes to workout, he had tremendous power and I have never seen anyone hit punch bag the way he did, as a middle weight in his early days beat Tony Sibson and at one time was ranked 3rd in the world, but was messed up by management. He became a friend who rented my gym from me, a point that I will cover later. There were also two tae Kwon Do lads, Paul Harris and Malcolm Rutter who were both red belts at the time and Jeff “Mantas” Dunn, who was a blue belt. I used to wind Malcolm up by standing shoulder to shoulder with him and ask him to kick me, but it was just friendly banter. The owner of gym was Guiseppe Bivona, a Sicilian with a love of the martial arts and any sort of physical training, he got me a job working on the Tuxedo Princess a floating nightclub on the Tyne, initially on the cocktail bar, but when the management found out about my training transferred me to working on the door as a bouncer. Over the years I have worked at several big nightclubs in Newcastle, the last job was working for the Birmingham based Leisure Security at Planet Earth, then Ritzy’s when I retired New Year ’93 due to working with idiots rather than controlling them in the club, the assassination of a local gangster, Viv Graham, was not an issue but it did not help neither did one of my workmates getting followed home and stabbed one night. There were all the usual threats that all doorman get but I scored lucky when one disgruntled punter got in contact with someone to get my legs blown off, but fortunately I knew the guy he asked (Howard Mills, my friend the boxer who paradoxically had his leg blown off later). It was amusing when Leisure Security, who had a policy of training their staff which is commendable, brought a martial artist up from Birmingham to teach the ‘Door Supervisors’ control techniques, what was amusing was the look on the lads face when he walked into the club as he was one of Shaun Rawcliffe’s students and recognised me, but he was getting paid to do a job and I told him to forget it was me and just use me as a extra helper. I used to bump into Kevin Steel occasionally and we would chat, he was moving out to Hong Kong to work with Alec and had mainly focussed on Choy Lee Fut rather than the Wing Chun, but he would relate to what he had learnt out there. I remember him saying how the knife form was mainly used in Hong Kong to practice for the phoenix eye punch. I have been involved in performing demonstrations almost from the beginning, the first large demo was near Stoke, it had been organised by Dave Carnell and Kevin Frost, the details were vague but what made it stick in my head, apart from the 12 course meal in a local Chinese restaurant and the lad next to me sucking on half a chickens skull to get the brains out! It was that I was asked how I broke the inch boards of wood; this stunned me, as the simple answer is to just hit them. Wood breaking is only for performance and can be taught to anyone off the street in 5 minutes, the short range inch break is a bit more technical but still a simple skill. There are two times that my Wing Chun kicking showed its power in breaking, once when it was superior to both Karate and Tae Kwon Do and the other when I kicked through the end of an oak beam 12x12x5 inch, Paul Graydon (He goes by Paul O'Neil now and though I taught him the whole system before he went to live in Hong Kong for about a year I don't get a mention!) was working for a stonemason and brought it back from a church they had been working in, it did take me a few attempts but I succeeded after 20 minutes, Guiseppe wanted a go but the cracks were already there and the hard work done and it had become a personal battle with the piece of oak! The first occasion relates back to the Newcastle Exhibition demo, Ron Armstrong decided to bring his own wood rather than shop bought pine, they were oak boards he had got from some place, they were 11x13 inch, but the still had the bark on the outer edge and he had not tried one of them before the event! In the demo they would not break, much to the amusement of the usual bunch of little toe rags at the front of the stage; they were punched, kicked, elbowed, nothing worked, finally they had to give up and on returning to the Self Defence Centre were place on the Tae Kwon Do kicking frame, still they could not break one, Malcolm and Jeff Dunn (lead guitarist Mantis in Venom) tried without success, then I had a go and it went first time, Sifu looked at me and we just smiled, it took the system, who styles like to label as having no kicking techniques, to break the board, how ironic yet personally pleasing and yes it was a very smug smile on my face. Breaking chopsticks in the throat is another simple thing to achieve but I do not recommend it, as there is a specific knowledge required preventing injury. The first time I performed this feat in public was at the Ouseburn Community Centre and the memory of several women in the audience screaming as the end stuck to my neck, seeming to have penetrated, was a laugh. As a method to get into the local rag for editorial advertising, I contacted them about this ability to smash bits of plastic into my throat! When the photographer turned up he was under the impression that I put the chopstick down my throat sword swallower style, while I was putting him right there was a fly buzzing around and as it was doing another fly past I took a shot at it with the chopstick, to my amazement I hit it right on the head and it crashed like a Stukka, however my amazement was nothing to the dumbstruck look on the photographers face; as I continued with the conversation as though it was the sort of thing I did every day he went away with the impression of me being a kung fu mystic. Would love to know how the legend developed in his world! Also when involved with promoting local young businesses I was featured on the local TV news shows, on ITV I was breaking wood and on BBC1 Look North I did the chopsticks which brought a grimace to Mike Neville’s face and the statement “I bet he is popular in the Chinese restaurant.” There have been hundreds of demos over the years Newcastle Exhibition, Gateshead Garden Festival, opening Newburn Riverside Sports Centre, Chinese New Year’s in Leeds, Manchester and Leicester Square. Night clubs, pubs, Community Centres, local fairs, impromptu ones on the street, TV, radio, and for the press, each one I will try to cover at some point as I have so many amusing tales from them, mind you sometimes you just had to be there, like when a lad nearly got a spear though his skull via his eye but lucky for him the point hit him smack between the eyes! Shaun and me could hardly stop, poor Larza, he was too stunned to say an awful lot, just go pale and almost faint! After the Self Defence Centre, the business moved to Body Express, just up the road on Pilgrim Street in Newcastle. Not much changed except the addition of Jintian Do, this was an ‘evolution’ continuing from Tae Kwon Do>Tukido>Jintian Do, I was also involved with training with the ‘Newcastle Browns’ the first American Football team started in the city, I had intended to try out for the Quarterback position until I heard who was going to be financing them, a local nightclub owner who I did not respect, but that is another story. One of the players was a lad called Steve, who played Centre in the offensive frontline, as you can imagine a rather large chap. I showed him how to create ‘inch energy’ the result from a ‘friendly’ with a team from Glasgow was a broken neck of his opponent with a palm strike to the helmet, his comment after was “It works!” It was while at Body Express that the first Yip Chun seminar was held, at that time and for the next few years, when Yip Chun came to Newcastle to do a seminar he would stay with me at my flat, later B&B and then he would just be passing through as his schedule around the country became tighter. The first year, 1985, was an eye-opener for me in many ways. He focused on correcting forms and initiating Chi Sau drills and techniques. What also made an impression on me were his humour, humility and intelligence that came over through his words via my Sifu Samuel Kwok. We also made an instructional tape covering Chi Sau, the Knife form and the proper sequence for the dummy, with an extra routine extending the practice of the dummy. In that first year I travelled with Sifu and Sigung around the country helping with the seminars at the various venues and manning the video recorder. It was after the Southampton seminar that I got a reprimand, in Sifu’s car on the way back to Blackpool, Sifu asked me “Would I move people’s furniture about if I was visiting someone’s house?” of course the answer was “No.” the rebuff then came “Then the next time you are in another instructors club don’t touch the students!” My misdemeanour was that in the break in the middle of the seminar I had been talking to students, giving them advice and demonstrating the techniques from the first half of the seminar while they were having refreshments but as I had not been specifically asked by the club instructor, Nathan Johnson, I had in Yip Chun’s eyes been disrespectful. I took the slap on the wrist with the intention it was given, I had always got on well with Nathan since the time we met in London when he and his students first introduced themselves to Sifu Kwok. His background was in the William Cheung methodology and more sparring based than Chi Sau, Nathan came across as a thinker, whose enthusiasm matched mine as far as Wing Chun was concerned, always searching for the truth and understanding. It was one of the occasions that Sifu showed my infamous letter, after a meal Sifu took us to visit a friend from his Lee Sing days, Eddie Yeoh. It was here that we had an amusing afternoon ‘playing’ Chi Sau, as I remember the invitation being phrased. It started more like warfare, as Chi Sau tends to be when two schools ‘play’, but did end up as a friendly exchange. Sifu went into a back room with Eddie to ‘play’ their Chi Sau in private, after he emerged and we set off back home he related the events of what happened, needless to say he was smiling. Some weeks after, Nathan and his students arranged with Sifu to do ‘the tea ceremony’, the formal acceptance as an indoor student. I was down for the weekend as usual at that time, not sure if it was by bus or hitch-hiking, but Sifu wanted me to do the ceremony before them as he is a great believer in tradition and as I had been training with him longer wanted me to be historically ahead of them. First, as I had no inkling that this was on the cards I did not have my training gear and had to borrow Sifu’s kung fu bottoms, and then he had to give the money to put in the red envelope to give back to him! Such is Sifu’s generosity. Strangely I was happy and pleased that I learned nothing new from the Wong Shun Leung seminar; that is not quite true, I learned new different personal applications of Wing Chun, but in essence the basics were what I had already been told. So the reinforcement of my understanding was a positive as well as meeting the man himself. Wong Chun Leung came across as a practical soul who demanded respect through his knowledge of the system, and his video ‘Wing Chun, The Science of In Fighting’ is one of the best available in its simplicity and instructional benefit. The other memorable event of that day was Bey Logan getting jumped on outside ‘The Basement’ after the seminar by three top students of a well known London based martial artist who felt he had been on the wrong end of one of Bey’s reviews in Combat magazine. After being jumped on by these three top students all he suffered was a slightly bruised ear, hardly the scars of a sound beating, I used to suffer much worse playing rugby every week. My visit to ‘The Basement’ with three of my student was also an education, at the time I had not been that long with Sifu and had only recently been introduced to Chi Sau properly and the three lads obviously even less. So there was me, Neil Edmonds, John Morton and Paul Graydon who set off to London on the overnight bus, this was before the days of the luxury coaches with heating and toilets, setting off 11pm and arriving 7am, freezing cold, knackered through lack of sleep we eventually arrived in Stoke Newington for a day with Nino. It was not too far off ‘lambs to the slaughter’ but we all enjoyed ourselves and it was a very useful interlude that I still hold fondly in my memory. There is a video of the event but as with many of my old videos, it has gone missing but if it surfaces I will try to make it available. It was also in those early years that I was involve in the creation of two well received Wing Chun productions, “The Path To Wing Chun” by Samuel Kwok, my Sifu and “The Original Wing Chun” video by my Sigung and featuring Samuel Kwok and a menial student by the name of Trevor Jefferson. With “The Path To Wing Chun” I wrote out Sifu’s words and organised the layout contrary to what Peter Lewis got printed in the front! He did the photographs but I did the layout. At the pre-production stage I was a bit miffed with Dave and Kevin, not because of the slight errors in position that required a re-shoot of the photos but that they did not have the sense to try and resemble the original shoot for continuity, Dave’s new moustache and Kevin’s Cockatoo hairstyle, I had Paul Crompton on my back wanting to get to the printing stage. When Paul sent me the first proof, some of the photos were in the wrong order, so I cut up the proofs, placed then in the right order and sent them back. They were returned after a furious Paul phoned me to tell me that proofs were NEVER cut up just labelled as wrong with the directions written on the proof where things should go. Duly chastised I stuck all the pieces back in the original position and did what was asked of me, only to get another phone call from Paul to ask if I could come down to London asap and redo what I had done in the first place as the printers required it. One more thing about the trip to the ‘Smoke’ was the meal that Paul cooked, pulses with pickled plum? Well I was hungry and he was a gracious host, I cannot blame him for me not being a vegetarian. The first edition of “The Path To Wing Chun” came out in 1985 and as my home address was in the back as Secretary to the Association I got mail from all over the world, correspondence that I still have today. I hoard things and have kept almost all of the written material that I have gathered over the years, my own personal archive and museum. The making of the “Original Wing Chun” video was a bit more of an immediate affair, all done within 24 hours. Danny Connor was heavily involved in the production of the video, organising the shoot and cameras through a professional TV production team. It took hours to cover the forms from different angles, with close-ups etc, but that was not it as far as I was concerned as I went back to the studio to help with the editing. It was the 14 hours solid in front of the TV screen that made it memorable, non-stop, food brought to us, stuck in a tiny room. I also made a tape recording once the editing was complete for the American voice over expert who Danny said he had lined up, to use for the audio backing, in the end it was Danny himself who’s dulcet tones you can hear on the video. During the filming of the video there were a few others present just observing, I seem to remember one was Ronnie Green and when Yip Chun and Sifu were busy we had a brief conversation, the only thing of note I remember about it was that he assumed that I was some kung fu devotee who treated his body like a temple, as he asked what special diet I followed. My reply shocked him I think as at the time I was training 7 days a week, afternoons and evenings, never at home, so “burgers and beer!” was not what he expected. Well it was Wimpys and Newcastle Exhibition to be precise but that is only me being pedantic to detail again. As I was teaching 7 days a week and Sifu was working full time, if a student was coming from overseas for a holiday then he would ask me down to look after their training while he was at work. One occasion a student came over from Denmark to stay with me, Ishan, the plan was for him to stay a fortnight and for me to teach him ‘everything’ I knew! With that remit I began in the first week to cover his forms, correct position and generally work on the mechanics, leaving the sensitivity training of Chi Sau for the week after. Unfortunately I took my task too literally and concentrated on passing on as much information as possible, he would write all what he had learned through the day down at night, he was a very good artist and did little graphics to go with his writings; he finished with enough information for his own book. At the end of the first week he ended up wandering around the streets of Felling at night in a daze, not a safe pastime! He did not return for the second week, I was gutted as it was going to be me chance at giving him a slapping in Chi Sau training. Over the next few years Ishan promised he would get me over to Denmark to do some seminars for him, but it always fell through at the last minute, I was not that bothered as I had heard the cost of beer out there and I would have ended up spending more than I had made. Ian Bowden and Matthew Chaplow were two lads from Houghton le Spring who joined Sifu’s association but came to train with me initially to learn the first two forms before travelling regularly to Blackpool. They had 10 years experience in Lau Gar, which was interesting to find out how another system operated, not only the physical training side but also the political and merchandising aspects. Well this takes us up to around 1985/6 just another 20 odd years to try to remember, as well as all the characters that I have met, hope you have enjoyed the journey down my memory lane so far and the links to some very interesting people on the way.
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