Willkommen to my first ever blog post!

The adage "write what you know" springs to mind when writing this first entry and while that would be fun, it has also occurred to me that writing entirely what I know may just get me arrested so with that in mind, I'll kick off this post with what the latest is in my attempts to procure armour for full-contact fighting.

This blog in its genesis was for the purposes of keeping in contact with friends while I was overseas at the world championships for medieval full contact fighting in Prague in May 2015. Unfortunately since this required a method of accessing the internet and typing large swathes of text on a computer as opposed to a smart phone, these lofty ambitions fell by the wayside and I reverted to messaging apps on my phone. I had a laptop with me but *effort*, and who wants to spend 10 days in Prague on a laptop?

So I'm picking up and introducing you to my world, on the first day of the second half of 2015, which is almost a month to the day since I flew out to Prague, and perhaps FINALLY putting my writing skills from my long-forgotten Journalism diploma from so many years ago to use (Mum would not be happy if she actually knew- "I sink all that money into your college diploma and you end up doing THIS!?!?!")...

And-here-we-go:

I've been a medieval re-enactor since one fateful day in January 2011 when, after around a year of hearing all about medieval fighting and how great it was from my friend's husband, I found myself on a Saturday with nothing do to and a desire to get out of the house and in a moment of either complete insanity or clarity of thought (depending on the mood I'm in during such nostalgic reflections), I agreed to go with him to training to check it out. Fast forward to July 2013 and in a plot twist no one (including myself) saw coming, I find myself simultaneously commencing training for full contact medieval combat and examining whether I have a subconscious death wish. But much more on that later!

This morning I received an email from an overseas company I had contacted three weeks ago in order to obtain some custom-made padding to go underneath my full contact armour, answering my request for information on what kind of padding they could provide. Except because they had taken so long to reply to my initial enquiry, I had since researched, found, ordered and paid for padding from another company and ordered my armour from an armourer in Ukraine whose permanent gig seems to be outfitting almost the entire Australian team with armour. Good timing right there.

On my way to court for work, I felt a twinge in the crook of my right elbow. My inner hypochondriac had a field day. "TENDONITIS!" she bellowed with great gusto. "And you'll never haul your suitcase full of kit down the stairs at the station again, let alone fight!!". Good times. Fortunately, by the time I'd returned to my desk, the twinge had gone and Miss H. Chondriac was twiddling her un-manicured thumbs and critically examining her new blouse. Tendonitis has plagued a few of the male fighters in the Australian full contact team and the issue flared up in Prague, so this plays on my mind at times.

The best part of the day came at lunch- I received a call saying my camera memory card, which had corrupted the night after I returned from Prague, was ready to be collected from the camera store I had taken it to in an effort to rescue the photos. The card was scanned and most of the photos have been rescued, THANKFULLY, because I'm not sure about you, but I certainly don't want to face up to a group of burly medieval fighters and tell them the photos I took of them have been lost. In all seriousness though, I was grateful because for obvious reasons, I can't just re-create the event and take the photos again. The guys are mostly historical re-enactors, but not to the extent they'd re-enact the event specifically so I could photograph it again!

That's all for today- and tonight's workout, should all go to plan, will be a 1.7k jog around a nearby park- to get my cardio up and to reminisce about primary school cross country carnivals run on the very same track many, many moons ago.