The Isle of Wight or how I learnt that SPF 25 just isn’t enough…

Monday, July 17, 2006 2:02 AM

The story begins on the morning of Saturday the 8th of July 2006. I wake early to finish the latest update to http://www.stillflying.net and upload it. None of which quite goes to plan. The update takes much longer than planned, with more needing to be done than I thought and those updates taking longer and being harder to implement than expected.

But finally it is done and the site is ready for upload, ten minutes before I have to leave the house in order to drive to Portsmouth harbour to catch my ferry to the Isle of Wight. I upload it to the testing server and it works perfectly. ‘Great’, I think before deleting the old sites files and uploading the new ones. I navigate to the URL to expecting to see the website in all its glory, only all I see is a loooong list of php error messages.

Five minutes until I have to leave. I go through the error messages and it’s apparent that the site can’t find any of it’s include files, despite the fact it’s looking in the right place and they are all there. I search I look I scream I shout I beg I plead and then I change the single variable that reads “/sandbox/” to “/” and re-upload and everything suddenly works fine.

I send those last emails, shutdown the computer, finish throwing my cloths in a bag (missing some that I end up needing) and throw everything in the car. Off on the road again to Portsmouth through sun, traffic and jam. I arrive, just in time, just over half an hour before the sailing, so naturally I had a 45 minute wait before I could even board the ferry.

The bonus is that I managed to be the first off the ferry, and despite my GPS telling me to turn left when it meant right I arrived at the caravan park which was to be my home for the next week. I unpack, attend the group meeting and then go for a beer at the bizarre little ‘Family Fun Club’ which has some sort of Cabaret one man Karaoke act being performed by the campest man never to have appeared in a Carry On Film.

So the first day comes to an end with a late night of beer, TV and badly cooked sausage casserole, how better to start a week of intensive Kung Fu training?

I’m here for a weeks Kung Fu training for the style I am a student of, Nam Yang Tiger Crane combination Kung Fu. Nam Yang originated in the Fukkien province of China, and is a combination (as the name suggests) of the Tiger and White Crane styles of Kung Fu. The Tiger style is a very strong style, and is where the twisting punch that is a hallmark of Shaolin marshal arts comes from. The Tiger is beatable though by the Monkey, Monkey style Kung Fu uses weaker attacks but combines them with fast approaches and retreats that prevent the Tiger from attacking, in this way the Monkey can defeat the Tiger by constant attacks without receiving a hit. Which is where the White Crane comes in, the Crane sticks to it’s opponent, thus when the Monkey attacks the Crane stays with it while the Monkey tries to retreat, and waits for the opportunity to strike. In Tiger Crane combination the ability of the White Crane to stay with an opponent and the strength of the Tiger are combined to produce a strong style that can stay with and attack even the Monkey.

I look at the training schedule, 6 full days, Sunday to Friday each day split into 4 sessions, the first starting at 8:30am and the last finishing at 7:00pm. The only exceptions are Wednesday (1:30pm finish) and Friday (5:00pm finish followed by a demonstration), it’s going to be a tiring week.

The training starts early at 8:30am on Sunday the 9th of July 2006, that is the day is supposed to start early at 8:30am. In defiance to the expected weather and the roaring Sun of Saturday the day begins cloudy, overcast and with a good sheet of rain in case no one knew that it wasn’t a very nice day.

We wait an hour.

It continues to rain.

It’s beginning to look like the script to a bad Carry On Kung Fu film, well we do have the overtly camp guy.

After a general meeting we decide to wait another hour, after which the weather clears up and we can make our way down to a field to start the

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