When I was six or seven I got ready for school one morning, emerging from my bed with all the pep and vim (two criminally underused nouns) a primary school child should start a day with. Looking back, I seem to recall that it was a gloriously sunny morning which promised all the best that life has to offer, though I’m open to the suggestion that I’ve since imbued it with this cheery weather to heighten the tragic irony of the anecdote. I popped my blazer and shorts on and looked forward to the lessons I’d learn that day, as I was one of those intolerable twerps who loves school.

“All ready for school, Paul?” My Mum perhaps asked, though realistically you must understand that this was a long time ago and I am ad-libbing quite a lot of the minor details.

“Sure am, Mum! Now to embark upon the task of putting on my shoes, which I presume will be an uneventful and in no way deeply traumatising experience,” I definitely replied as I slid a besocked left foot into my shoe and awaited the traditional sensation of dry foot meeting dry insole.

Instead, the two met with a squelch, and I looked down to see an exodus of viscous red liquid from inside my patent black size twos.

The crying – and I do remember this as a fact – began immediately. Not a whimper or a sob, but an uncontrollable primal scream punctuated only to take in air. It’s hard to have appropriate perspective when you’re that young, and as I watched tomato ketchup ooze inexplicably from beneath the soles of my feet, it felt quite a bit like my life was falling apart. No explanation for this turn of events presented itself, so I just assumed that God hated me. That’s a lot to deal with when you’re in primary three. ‘Still’, I thought, ‘this is a bizarre, once-in-a-lifetime happening. No dark miracle could possibly bring about a situation in which not only my left, but also my right, school shoe was filled with ketchup. The idea is so preposterous that I won’t even check my second half of footwear before putting it on, for I am a man of science who has no time to evade such implausible witchcraft.’ Squelch. ‘Ah. My previous confidence, I now see, has been my undoing. Best continue with this lovely bit of crying, then’.

My screams reverberated against the walls of my living room and my Mother, innately tuned to protect her young, burst through the door to watch in horror as tangy condiment pooled generously beside my ankles. I looked at her through tear-soaked eyes in search of an explanation, but her facial expression made it clear she had none for me. Not to worry: In 10 seconds we’d both see what had occurred.

10 seconds later, my brother (probably eight years old at the time) peeked round from behind the door. He saw me, saw my shoes, and the grin on his face defied physics. The entire story was written on his smile. He must’ve known there’d be consequences, but to him it mattered not – right now, there was only a hysterical child, a panicked mother, and a wicked wheeze gone astronomically well. On the best days of my life, I will think back to Sean’s delight from that doorway and know that I’ll never be as content, ever, as he was in that moment.

This week I’ve been going to Thai boxing classes with my brother at The Griphouse martial arts gym. Our week culminated, yesterday, with a fight TO THE DEATH but not to the death. Oh, all the conventional statistics fell his way: Bigger; Stronger; More Experienced; Is The Kind Of Person Who Voluntarily Takes Part In Sport Without Feeling The Need To Write A Blog About The Experience. But I had one thing he didn’t: the hot, underlying rage of a saucy-footed child.

Not that that helped much when I was learning the ropes. Our instructor was called Guy, in what I presume is a Dickensian nod to the exaggerated masculinity of the discipline. From the moment we arrived and heard Guy shout out the specifics of our 10-minute warm-up session, I was pretty keenly aware that I didn’t fit in.

You know how sometimes, when you really exert yourself physically, you can kind of taste blood at the back of your throat? I don’t actually know if that is a common observation – I might have just revealed that I’m minutes from death, like a car crash victim asking his friends if anyone else is bleeding from the ear and has stopped being able to see colours. Either way, I sometimes get that disconcerting sensation at the end of a long period of exercise or sport. At The Griphouse, though, that shit hit me practically from my first press-up. It was almost prescient, like my body saying:

‘Listen mate, neither of us is going to enjoy this. You have nothing to prove here. Wouldn’t you be happier sitting down to a nice game of Scrabble? Here’s a little taste of blood to help you come to a sensible decision. Do the right thing before I have to collapse a lung, eh?’

Ignorant of the fact that my body was producing what doctors would surely refer to as ‘early warning signs’, Guy, along with his fellow trainers Lad and Chap (elements of this paragraph are fictitious) called out increasingly unrealistic quantities of leg and stomach exercises. ‘You know that thing you just did three of, and now your spine tickles? 10 of those, please. Chop chop.’

Once I had caught my breath, we ran through Thai boxing’s basic moves. Punches seemed pretty standard but I really enjoyed the kicks – you do them with your shin connecting to your opponent’s ribs, and you’re supposed to swing your shoulders into it, and it’s crazy satisfying when it lands. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time before you start to feel like you’ve learned an applicable skill (and that’s my experience, and I’m guessing I was terrible).

In our second session we did kicks with spins. I’m all for anything that makes me feel like CM Punk or Tommy the Green Ranger (relevant image), so this was a wonderful surprise. By this point I was aware that me and Sean were going to fight for a bit, and vowed to incorporate a spin kick or two into the bout.

If you’re wondering what happened in the fight, look at the photo above and bear in mind that one of those men has been training in Thai boxing for approximately five years, while the toughest motherfuckers the other can think to compare himself to are a professional wrestler and a Power Ranger. Natty shorts though, huh?

I started off remembering my training, and trying to string together the jab-straight-hook or heel kick-back kick combinations we had practiced, but that didn’t last as long as I might’ve hoped. Mike Tyson said that “everyone has a plan ’til they get punched in the mouth”, and though my brother was undoubtedly going easy on me (he suggested early on that we both ‘hit softly’; a suggestion I soon ignored once I was backed into a corner), it’s quite difficult to remember your train of thought when you’ve been punched non-metaphorically in the face. I soon readjusted my expectations for the morning from ‘destroy’ to ‘survive’.

I still tried a spin kick, ’cause why not, but Sean harnessed some sort of mystic shaman power to – see if you can follow this, it’s quite intricate – grab my foot with his hand. I toppled over and landed on my back, expecting everybody else in the room to laugh at my failure. As it happened, though, they didn’t give a quarter of a shit. I imagine woefully under-prepared boxers trying their hand at sparring must be quite a common occurrence.

It wasn’t all one way traffic. In an actual fight, just keeping your guard up (always at your temples, so your hands are in position to block both straights and hooks) can become genuinely tiring. My block started to give way early on, but as Sean moved in to punish my mistakes he let his slip a little as well. I managed to land a jab to his forehead and a hook to his temple before the buzzer, and Sean’s desire not to hospitalise his kin, stepped in to save me.

Fighting might not solve anything, but ultimately it’s quite satisfying. Even in defeat it was nice to have tried, and seeing which things you have learned can actually be put effectively into practice is fascinating. Good for alleviating long-held condiment-based resentments, too.

*

Next week, Paul tries food that he hates.

*

Paul thoroughly enjoys writing this blog, because it gets him out the house and makes him feel like he’s contributing. Your admiration is all he requires. However, if you’ve enjoyed his witterings and have a couple of coins rattling around, perhaps you’d like to make a donation to a cause close to his heart. Leuchie House is an independently run charity offering holidays to sufferers of long-term degenerative conditions and their carers. It can be a vital lifeline for disabled people and their loved ones, giving respite in a social and non-clinical setting. Here’s the donating page.