When my father left home, I was in the final years of junior school. It's hard to be more precise about these things, because he kept coming back and leaving again. He didn't know what he wanted to do, it seemed. It's difficult to put memories of that time in any kind of order.
I had no interest in the school youth club, but my brother wanted to try it out, or our parents needed to talk without us there. To be honest, I don't remember the reason why I had to go, but there was no sense that it was something avoidable.
There was a snooker (or maybe pool?) table in a side room. As that was one of my brother's interests, it was natural that he'd spend his time there. Me? I was incredibly socially anxious at that age, so the time there was mostly spent wandering aimlessly. At the far end of the club was a small indoor play area - the kind with lines painted onto a wooden floor. A game of football was in progress. There were loose footballs at the side, so I decided to just kick a ball back and forth at the side of the playing area.
Mark Charlton had never given me any trouble before. It's likely that we'd had no interaction at all, really. Him marching up to where I was, asking if he'd given permission for me to kick a ball around, came as something of a surprise. Him becoming increasingly aggressive and trying to push me around came as even more of a surprise. I'd been taking judo lessons from the age of seven, so had already been doing that for a few years at the time of this night at the youth club. I knew how to maintain my own balance, and how to disturb someone else's. By the time a "responsible adult" was able to intervene, Mark was on his back, and I was sitting atop him, letting a rain of punches fall on his face.
My first time at the school youth club would also be my last.
Sometimes, when we leave our home, we go back to check that we have locked the door or to check something else. We can tell ourselves we've had a blank moment, that we are becoming forgetful. We could also say that we've done something so many times that it requires little conscious thought. Perhaps it requires no conscious thought at all.
What does any of that have to do with judo? Well, experience is a great teacher, and experience taught me a very valuable lesson. If you practise, practise and practise some more, you reach the point where little conscious thought is needed for the performance of a skill. In fact, conscious thought can get in the way. Forget you even learned a martial art or combat sport and just act. The people of Japan have a word for this - mushin.
It wasn't that I wanted to fight. In truth, a day where I didn't have to fight would have been very welcome. Unfortunately, my brother didn't think I should be allowed such a luxury. No one taught me how to throw a punch, but I learned. The first few years of secondary school were also pretty rough. Some would talk about this with pride for their own sense of toughness. I can't do that.
Will the constant fear of sudden, unprovoked physical attack ever go away? I don't know. I was never in control, you see. I was never the one who decided a violent encounter would happen. Nothing in my demeanour had ever suggested that I wanted to fight - it happened against my will.
On one occasion, I'd had enough. As he marched forward with his hands raised into a boxing guard (he loved the Rocky films), I kicked his thigh with as much force as I could muster. He dropped to the floor, appearing to be in agony. Panic set in. I knew from experience, if my brother did anything wrong, we were "both as bad as each other"; if there was any sense that I'd done something wrong, it was for me alone to be shamed to the point of submission, and any perceived transgression was talked about as if it was the worst act any human had ever committed. I ran to my sister's house, where my mother was visiting, and told her what had happened. When we got back, my brother said he was going to kill me.
"Honestly, I can't leave you two alone for five minutes. You're both as bad as each other."
For a while, I lived in Northern Ireland, and the atmosphere of the area in which I lived felt so threatening that an obsession with martial arts practice took over. With the lockdown in place, as a response to the pandemic, there's a real danger of that obsession taking over again.
At the moment, I'm limiting myself to practising tai chi and eskrima.
