Rain buckets down onto grey tennis courts, puddles coalescing into lakes.
On the football pitch the Spurs goalkeeper, a new guy from Thailand, makes a hash of the pass back and balloons the ball into the air. I want to flick his neck on the TV to see if he reacts. Somehow the ball lands at the feet of an opponent but when the attacker tries to kick the ball into the open net it goes to the straight to the goalkeeper. This time he makes decent pass down the right flank into midfield. The referee calls it a foul anyway and awards the ball back to the other team.
I want to yell at the ref too.
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Instead I am late for class and need to run, even though it is raining and I don’t feel like going.
When I get to the studio the others are lined up outside in the courtyard showing the basics to Len and Melanie.
Len tells a student, Show me your bow stance! he sounds accusing. The student gets into position under cover of the rain, along the courtyard’s edge.
We are in Syon House. The red wooden walkway is reminiscent of old Vietnamese colonial houses. Rain like a monsoon pours into the gardens, but still spills onto the covered path.
We line up to form a standing posture in preparation for the walk from one end of the path to the other but there is not enough space to walk abreast along the path; so half the students go to one end, the other half go to other. And before we begin, we take our shoes off to make sure that our stance is correct and our toes point in the right direction.
I sit down on the red wooden bench at one end and stare down at my feet. They are pale and swollen from being out in rain and puddles.
What on earth! I exclaim.
On each foot the big toe is located on the left of the rest. A right foot on the end of each leg waiting for the next instruction.
Image by Marci Marc from Pixabay
