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Category: Personal

Lessons from my 7-day data detox: on becoming a cat

My pell on its new base, with a longsword leaning against it, put together during my 7 day data detox.

I spent the first week of October on a data detox. No emails, no whatsapp, no socialz, no scrolling. It’s been a lovely mental break. My initial reason for trying this was to allow my inner visionary to be heard, as per this post. 

The single biggest surprise is how little I missed it. I was really looking forward to it, and enjoyed the lack of distraction very much indeed. Days one and two were very relaxing. For reasons I can’t pin down, but which may be related to withdrawal, I was grumpy as hell for days three and four. Oddly though I didn’t have any urge to get online, so I don’t think it was withdrawal exactly. Then things perked up immensely on days 5-7, and I got a bunch of things done that I’ve been meaning to get round to. More on that below.

Filling the Void

So what filled the void created by the data detox? That gaping chasm of boredom and ennui that our marvellous machines cover up with clicks and scrolling?

1. I’ve thought a lot. It’s actually nice to be back in my own head a bit more.

2. I’ve did a lot more actual sword practice, in addition to my usual physio/fitness/strength stuff.

3. Coincidentally (I think, because these were planned ages ago) I went to the actual theatre, and met friends for lunch in the pub (yes I’m still off booze, 50 more days to go), and been to a talk (given by Roland Allen, of The Sword Guy and A History of Thinking on Paper fame). All analogue, real people in a room together, offline goodness.

I should point out that I was not religious about this. I used my wife’s laptop to print out crosswords, and fired up my phone to be able to navigate to drop off my daughter at a friend’s house for a party (I don’t have a paper map of the area, which I should!). But outside some very sensible exceptions, I’ve kept the phone turned off, and did not check any messaging apps or email when I did turn it on. The computer was not turned on at all.

I finished making my mum’s birthday present, put a new base on my pell so it stops falling over when it’s windy (see the photo above), and rearranged my study such that I could get my point control wall target up (it needs a sturdy wall to hang on, and room in front and to the sides for footwork). 

Wall target put up during my 7 day data detox. Leather and wood, on a red wall.

I also planned a new launch, thought about the overall structure of my business, and got a bunch of CEO stuff done. I don’t think my visionary woke up particularly, so I need to think about how to make that happen.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how we have all sorts of social rules and norms around other addictive behaviours, such as drinking and smoking. If someone offered you a glass of wine at 11am you might say “it’s a bit early for me”. Because these days it’s normal to avoid drinking during the day. Likewise smoking. It used to be everywhere, all the time. But now it would be very very rude to light up inside someone’s home without asking, and most smokers would automatically go outside.

But watch any TV show from the 80s and just about every rich person is having a drink at 10am, and everyone rich or poor is smoking indoors at all hours. These healthier rules around smoking and drinking are relatively new, and relatively unconnected with legislation.

I do well with rules if they’re my own. (I do much less well with other people’s rules.) Both phones and computers are incredibly useful. But they are inherently built for distraction. So here are my rules for using my computer and my phone.

Rules for the Computer

1. Be a cat. I’ve borrowed this from Jaron Lanier’s excellent 10 Arguments for Deleting All Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Cats don’t try to please people. They just pursue their own agenda, and allow the people in their life to serve their needs. If a cat wants stroking, you’ll know. The computer belongs to me. It’s a critically important tool for writing books, editing video, running my business, and communicating with people.

But it’s been warped by the internet into also being a major source of distraction. So I will approach my computer the way a cat approaches the humans that feed it. I’ve always had all notifications turned the hell off, but that doesn’t stop me from getting distracted.

2. Decide what I want to do before waking it up. That could be work on the next book, or some critical business task like paying a freelancer, or emailing someone about something. Then do that thing first. After my week away I have a long list of things to do, including drafting this blog post, that comes ahead of checking my emails. Happy to report I’m following my own rules.

3. Unless I have a good reason, don’t open any communications app before 2pm. Exceptions include scheduled zoom sessions (running a trainalong or doing crosswords with my mum are both good reasons), or if I’m expecting a time-critical message about something actually important.

4. Turn off all comms apps at or before 5pm. Exceptions as per rule 3. And take at least one full day per week off all comms. I think probably Thursdays, which I generally keep free anyway. 

5. Be a cat. It’s worth an extra rule to be reminded of the first one.

What do I want my Fondleslab Distraction Engine (aka “phone”) for?

There are many excellent things about the phone that I want to keep, that I missed during the data detox. In no particular order they are:

  • Camera
  • Podcast player
  • Music player
  • Sound recorder (when recording videos etc.)
  • Maps/navigation
  • Payments
  • Wallet for tickets, boarding passes, etc.
  • Calendar
  • The Sword People app for keeping in touch with my sword people and posting sword photos
  • Calculator
  • Notes app for when I don’t have a notebook or pen with me. Rare, but it happens.
  • StrengthLog app for tracking weights workouts
  • Family Whatsapp channel. I’d like to move it to Signal, but I don’t think we’d get everyone on board with it (my siblings, their kids, my kids, it’s actually quite a lot of people).
  • Some friends prefer Signal, so I have that for talking with them. 
  • One dear friend, and my godson only really use Discord, so I have that too.

But other than those excellent things, why would I want to be continually distracted?


Rules for the Fondleslab Distraction Engine

1. Be a really fucking grumpy cat.

2. Delete all addictive apps. No games, nothing that makes me likely to scroll (Ebay, Vinted, Chrono24, etc.). No emails. I have the accounts still there in the system settings, but I’ve turned off the email function. That way if I need to be able to check email on my phone for some reason, it’s easy to turn back on, but it’s not on by default.

3. Turn off all notifications. All of them. Especially badges (those red things that flag the app's icon). I’ll check the apps when I want to. The phone still rings if you call me, but that’s it.

4. WhatsApp, Messenger, etc. are strictly friends and family only. I have SwordPeople for work-related messaging. (Feel free to sign up there if you want to be able to message me outside email.)

5. Switch off the phone completely for at least one full day per week. So e.g. turn it off in the evening, and not turn it on until the morning of the day after next.

Final Thoughts on the Data Detox

I’m also thinking about getting a new phone number, and relegating the current one to a no-data phone, so I can use it for two-factor authentication, and as my “business” number, and keep my other number entirely private, so only people I’ve actually given it to will have it. My current number is clearly on too many databases, given the number of spam calls and texts I get.

I’m not alone in fighting this fight. Useful resources are the aforementioned Jaron Lanier’s 10 Arguments. Also Cal Newport’s Deep Work, and for non-algo-poisoned tech solutions, the Creative Good forum has all sorts of options and suggestions. Once you have all this distraction-free time you'll need to learn to prioritise, so you may find my post about deciding what to focus on helpful.

It's worth explicitly stating that I welcome emails from my students, readers, friends, family, and even some newsletters and other things. Email isn't the problem. It's letting it spill out of a confined space to take over my brain that’s the problem. The same is true for messaging apps generally. I've broken the cycle of reflexively checking for anything new coming in with my seven days off, so now I need to keep that cycle broken. Or I'll end up having a (metaphorical) whisky and a cigarette for breakfast again.

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The 5 Project Roles Every Creator Needs (Even If They’re All You)

The 5 project roles every creator needs: Visionary, CEO, Project Manager, Designer, Craftsman

Every project, no matter its size, needs five people. Most of us have only one: ourselves.

I was chatting with a friend the other day, and he mentioned a framework that his dad, a very successful entrepreneur, came up with. According to him, the five people every company needs are: The Founder, The CEO, The Project Manager, The Engineer, and the Builder.

For some reason this stuck with me, to the extent that I’ve been making weird pentagonal drawings on the back of random printouts:A geometrical sketch or a pentagon and five pointed star re the five project roles

It's always a sign that something is brewing when I start spontaneously doing geometry. For weeks I couldn't get this idea out of my head. It explains many of the challenges I've faced running my business, and has highlighted some areas I need to work on.

The Five Project Roles

The catch? In my world, and probably yours, all five roles are played by the same person.  But they are very, very different roles requiring unrelated attitudes, aptitudes, and skills.

The aptitudes are:

  1. Vision,
  2. Execution,
  3. Management,
  4. Design, and
  5. Craftsmanship.

Very few people possess all five personalities and skillsets. I certainly don’t. But using this framework I can see why and how I’ve ended up outsourcing the things I’m not good at, and also confirmed what I absolutely must not outsource.

Case Study: The project roles you need when writing your book

Let’s take a concrete example that many folk can resonate with: writing, publishing, and marketing a book. These are separate processes, so while the visionary and CEO are hopefully leading the way, and the project manager is coordinating the three processes, it makes sense to treat them separately, as the design and craft teams are different.

When we think of “writing a book”, we tend to focus on the craftsman: the writer actually putting one word after another, like a bricklayer building a wall. But what colour bricks, in what pattern? Where should the wall be, and how high should it go? That’s up to the designer. In this case, the overall structure and content of the book. What does this book need to contain, in what order, to what depth of detail?

Most writers act as both Designer, shaping the structure, and Craftsman, laying down the words, but a developmental editor can help with design while a copy-editor polishes the craft. So you will only need to wear your writer hat to get this part done. And most writers I know identify only as writers. This is the hat they want to wear. But here's how it should go:

The Visionary has the idea. I want to create this thing. A single book, perhaps. An entire business, for another perhaps.

The CEO figures out how the vision can be made manifest in the real word. What project management, design, and craftsmanship will we need? It’s in a CEO’s nature to veer away from the vision towards the practical. So the visionary must keep an eye on things and make sure their beautiful idea doesn’t become watered down for business or other practical reasons.

Taking a step back, who decides what book, when? How does this specific project fit into the overall strategy of the business that is being an independent author? Many writers, including me, just write whatever they want, when they want, according to no plan of any kind. But most of the really successful ones have a strategy in place. This series in that genre, spread out over this timeframe, for this business goal. That’s CEO territory. My CEO quit a long time ago in frustration and disgust. But once the decision is made, the order comes down: this book, now.

The project manager steps into office. Ok, I’m going to need the following: a writer, a developmental editor, a copy editor, a layout designer, a photographer, an admin assistant to handle the publishing platform accounts, oh, and a marketing team when we’re ready.

Then the designer (or developmental editor) looks at the brief and decides what the overall structure of the book should be, and why. Some writers just start writing and see what structure emerges (‘discovery writers’); others plan things out in detail (‘outliners’). So the designer and the writer must get along pretty well, and pass the job back and forth as necessary. Unlike creating an engine or a building, you really don’t need detailed plans in place before starting work on a book if that’s not the way your brain works.

I’m a woodworker, and when I make a piece of furniture I usually start with the overall dimensions so it will fit where it’s going to go, and that’s it. No detailed drawings, no plans, no measurement. I’m a bit more structured when it comes to books (I usually sketch out the table of contents first), but I’m nothing like Saul Bellow, who famously planned his (Nobel Prize-winning) novels “down to the last flicker of an eyebrow”.

The draft emerges and goes through the necessary rounds of editing until it satisfies the project manager. Not the writer. Writers generally don’t like people messing with their words. But they are not in charge of this bit. The fight is usually between the craftsman wanting to tweak more, and the project manager who can see that the project meets spec and so should be pushed out the door.

Then it goes to layout, and the designer, writer, layout person, and editors fiddle about with the laid-out book until again the project manager signs off, and out it goes to the publishing team.

Publishing your book

Creating the book itself, the actual print files, is down to the graphic designer. Again, some writers can do this themselves, but most really can’t, or shouldn’t. Graphic design is its own thing. This, I would say, is still craftsmanship, but in a field that most writers have no knowledge of. For simple text-only books there are tools like Vellum which put simple book design within reach of the graphically unskilled, but for more complex projects (like my From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice series, or my workbooks) you absolutely need a professional.

Then who organises the planning, writing, editing, and layout, and gets the finished files uploaded to the right places, so the book is actually published? That’s project management, pure and simple. A lot of Indie authors do this for themselves too, and many stumble at this point. Because it’s hard, not least because emailing an editor to say the book is ready to be edited, or sending the edited files to the layout person, feels like handing your baby over at the daycare centre.

Then it goes to layout, and the designer, writer, layout person, and editors fiddle about with the laid-out book until again the project manager signs off. The writer, layout person, and editors, are all craftspeople, with their own areas of expertise, which often expand into design territory.

Then it goes to the admin assistant for publishing. The careful uploading of all the right files to all the right places, with metadata and all the rest, is a craft.

Marketing your book

At some point in the publication process the marketing team gets to work. Usually some time before the book is actually finished, sometimes before it’s actually started. Tragically often, after it’s already published.

The marketing team report to the project manager. What kind of campaigns should we run? Paid ads or no? Content marketing? If so what kind? The marketing approach should be engineered to fit with the vision, the overall strategy, and the project management of the book itself.

Most writers have a severely under-developed and under-staffed marketing team. The writer says “I’ll mention it on my socials” or “I’ll let my email list know” and that’s that. The question really is how does the marketing strategy fit with the overall strategic vision? If my strategic vision is “I want to write my books and don’t care how they sell”, then no marketing plan is required. If my strategic vision is “these books should pay the mortgage”, then a marketing team (usually still just another facet of the single person doing all these roles) needs to make that happen.

A common problem with marketing teams is that they mess up the vision, just like CEOs. It may be part of your vision that your work is at the luxury end of the market (super-fancy $100+ special editions), or that it’s as accessible as possible (hello free ebooks), or some combination of both. But the vision will determine the price-point, which is the starting point for the marketing. It’s easier to persuade people to buy a $10 book than a $100 book, but pricing is related to value, so you need to have a clear idea how much value your books will deliver.

My books are generally much more expensive than novels (my paperbacks go for about $30), because I’m not selling a few hours of entertainment to a broad range of people, I’m selling months or years of utility to a narrow range of highly interested people. That comes from the vision, which determines pricing. I also have premium-end books (in the $60 full-colour hardback range), and ebooks priced to be accessible for anyone who really wants the information ($10). I make about half my income from book sales: they literally feed my children. That’s both a product of the pricing strategy, and one of the reasons for it. But my marketing really needs work.

If you're looking for help writing, publishing, or marketing a book, my marketing team would lynch me if I didn't mention From Your Head to Their Hands.

How much time does each project role get?

  • 80% of the work is done by the craftsman. Typing out the right words in the right order, deciding what images are needed and where they’ll go, producing the file that goes to the editor and then to layout.
  • 10% is done by the designer. Organising the material, making sure the whole thing will hang together.
  • 7% is project management, getting the craftsman, designer, editor, and graphic designer talking to each other.
  • 2.9% is the CEO making sure the project manager is on the right track. Once the team is assembled, the CEO is really only there to keep things on track with a gentle hand on the tiller.
  • 0.1% or less is the actual spark of vision. The visionary can literally be done and dusted in a second. The idea strikes, and that’s that.

Let’s put this in a Fiorean framework, just for fun (Fiore was a 14th century master of knightly combat). The Visionary is Ardimento, boldness. It takes courage to see through what is to what might be. The CEO is Avvisamento, foresight, the strategist. The Project Manager is Presteza, speed, making sure everything actually gets done on time. The Designer is Forteza, strength, which comes from structuring everything correctly. So who is the Craftsman? Every single master, remedy master, counter-remedy master, and scholar in the treatise. They are actually putting the plan in action in the real world.

The most obvious thing I’ve noticed in my own work using this framework is that my craftsman, designer, and project manager are getting lots done. I produced six books and two online courses in 2024. This year so far I've produced four new online courses (Vadi Longsword, Vadi Dagger, Body Mechanics, and Introduction to Historical Martial Arts), and one or two more books are expected out by the end of this year. I think that counts as “lots”.

But my CEO is usually on holiday, and the visionary gets almost no time at all. Which is ironic given how this all started, with an actual vision on a Scottish mountain a quarter of a century ago.

Wearing All Five Hats as a Solo Creator

This framework matters because it is very useful for making decisions. Which of the five project roles should be to the fore, which hat should I be wearing, when I decide a book is ready to publish? Really, it should go through all five.

  1. Does this book come from an authentic vision?
  2. Does this book meet our strategy goals?
  3. Is this book technically ready to publish?
  4. Is this book well structured, so it will do its job?
  5. Is this book well made, in terms of writing, editing, and graphic design?

My current work in progress is From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the Dagger Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi. It’s with the editor now, and available to pre-order here. See? The marketing team is on the case even while the publishing team is in play. The vision is clear: this is 100% on-mission, making my interpretation of Fiore dei Liberi’s art of arms more available and completely transparent (the book includes every single dagger play in the treatise, with the image from the manuscript, my transcription of the text, my translation, my interpretation with academic justification, and a video of how I do the play in practice).

The CEO thinks it aligns with the strategy.

The project manager is keeping an eye on the editor and has the layout professional ready to go (and in communication with the editor directly).

The designer is happy with the structure and overall content.

The craftsman was sure he was done tinkering and needed a second opinion before further improvements could be made, so agreed to send it to the editor.

Phew.

I’m also working on a new facsimile project, similar to my Flower of Battle. It will have the straight, unaltered, facsimile of Philippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, and a second facsimile with my translation superimposed, and a link on each page to a video of my interpretation of the play. It’s a lot of work, but most of it was already done for other projects. The translation comes from The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest (with minor edits that will also result in an update to the book), the video clips come from my Vadi Longsword and Dagger courses.

The project manager was perfectly happy just using the videos as they are; all of the dagger plays are edited page by page, but the longsword plays have a video each (they are more complex to set up and explain). For this project, I really ought to create a new set of title cards, and re-edit the videos so that there’s one video per illustrated manuscript page. That’s about 56 videos.

The project manager was horrified by how much time that would take, for what is basically a cosmetic improvement.

The craftsman told him to bugger off.

Which role is not getting their fair share of my attention?

As we've seen, from the project manager on down everyone is working pretty hard. But the CEO hasn't got a lot of my attention lately. The last formal CEO thing I did was attend a business seminar with Joanna Penn and Orna Ross on The Creator Economy in 2022. And when was the last time I sat on a mountain?

To give the visionary a fighting chance (and maybe to get the CEO to return to work) I’m taking a week off from all screens and inbound traffic. No email, no socialz, no phone. Which means no actual making stuff unless it’s woodwork or bookbinding. No writing unless it’s pen on paper. No distractions. Give the inner voice a chance to be properly heard. We’ll see what comes of that. My feeling is that anyone who knows me well enough to need to contact me urgently will also be able to contact my wife and/or kids, so can find me that way. Everything else can wait a week without the sky falling.

I’ve done similar retreats before, but this one will be a bit different, as I’ll be home, and not on holiday in any way. It’s work, just of a different kind. Meditation, exercise, writing, reading, thinking. Not typing, editing, or responding to external requests for my time. That’ll run from Wednesday October 1st to Wednesday 8th because I have a regular zoom call with my mum on Wednesday mornings where we solve cryptic crosswords together, and I’m not cancelling that. But it’s all screens off the moment we hang up, until it’s time to get cracking again the following week.

The visionary’s whisper can’t be heard over the noise of constant production.

So whether you’re writing a book, starting a historical martial arts club, or building a shed, ask yourself:

  1. Can I hear the Visionary?
  2. Is the CEO guiding strategy?
  3. Is the Project Manager keeping things on track?
  4. Is the Designer building a solid plan?
  5. Is the Craftsman executing their art with skill?
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Quitting at the top of your game?

Alison Balsom is retiring this week, quitting after 25 years at the very top of the classical music world. She is probably the most famous classical trumpeter of her generation, and certainly ranks with the greats: André, Marsalis, Hardenberger, Harjanne (go Finland!). She’s 46.

I have several of her 17 albums, and she is an astonishing player. I've played the trumpet enough to really get how fabulously skilled she is.

So what? You may very well ask. Here’s the thing that really caught my attention. When asked by Classical Music magazine what she was going to do next, she said:

“I’m not going to be a world-famous anything else I don't think, but I really want to paint. I really want to make things, I really want to draw and learn another instrument… I have these recurring dreams about playing the viola and the cello and the violin… also I just have always wanted to design things. I just want to sit quietly and design things. That's what I was maybe supposed to be, a designer.”

She’s world class, and she’s quitting at the very top of her game. I have to respect that, and also, isn’t it an extraordinary thing that she thinks that maybe she should have done something else? She also said:

“I’ve followed my particular path, very honestly and with authenticity and I feel that I've come to the end of that path.”

Knowing when to quit is one of the most important skills in life. Dropping something even though you’re good at it (and she is the best), even when you’re successful, just because your heart isn’t in it any more.

Go Alison.

The night after I found this out, I had a weird dream in which I was at a concert where she was playing, and she was having all sorts of crises of confidence. I told her two things (just to be clear there is absolutely zero chance she would ever come to me for advice. This was my subconscious telling me something).

1. Your true fans care about your wellbeing more than about any one performance.

2. Play the music of your heart.

I’m not in her league in any field, but I am pretty well established in my profession. And yet every now and then (not less than once a month) I wonder whether I’m still doing what I’m supposed to be doing (whatever that means). Am I following my particular path with authenticity?

The one thing that reliably makes me feel like I’m in the right place doing the right thing is teaching in person. Having a classful of students growing in the art with a little help from me. Everything else, the writing, courses, all the extra stuff, is a maybe.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but it feels like a clear reminder that above all else I should be playing the music of my heart, whatever that is.

Maybe you should too?

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100 days no alcohol? Why? oh Why??

wine glass and bottle, scenery background, no alcohol 100 days

As I posted on Sword People last week, I'm taking 100 days off alcohol. Why would I do that?

The DEXA Scan: an uncomfortable truth

I was in London a couple of weeks ago for a family reunion, and took the opportunity to wiggle along for another DEXA scan (at BodyScan UK). My last was a year ago. On the positive side, I’ve put on about 2.4kg of ‘lean mass’ (the scan can identify fat, bone, and ‘lean mass’, which is everything that isn't fat or bone), mostly in the upper torso. And my overall fat percentage has come down from 24.8% in May 2024, to 21.5% now. Great.

But my genetics put the remaining fat mostly in my viscera, the absolutely worst place to have it. I had 148

cm² (which is a weird way to measure a volume, but hey) in May '24, down to 115cm² in August '24, but as the muscle piled on (yay!) it brought some fat with it (as it almost always does), and it all went round my organs, so it's back up to 136cm². Boo.

Dexa scan body composition history for Guy Windsor

Subcutaneous fat isn’t such a big health problem, in reasonable amounts. But visceral fat is bad for inflammation, blood lipids, diabetes risk, the works. And it seems that’s where I store it.

I've uploaded the results as a pdf here, in case you're interested in the actual numbers: Guy_Windsor_DEXA_2025-08-13-report

 

So why cut alcohol specifically?

I’m not a big believer in calorie restriction as the main driver of fat loss, because while the laws of thermodynamics are absolute, your body is insanely complicated, and has all sorts of ways of adjusting your metabolism to lose or put on weight depending on various triggers. What you eat, and when, is as important as how much. And don't get me started on gut biome. I first really understood this when I accidentally lost 10kg in three weeks. But if there are a bunch of unnecessary calories coming in from somewhere, that's the obvious place to start.

For me the biggest source by far of “empty” calories is alcohol. My natural state is to have a glass of wine or two while cooking, and another glass or three while having dinner, and maybe a dram afterwards, pretty much every day. I normally get through about 7 bottles of wine a week minimum, without hangovers or other obvious ill effects. I think my soul is mostly Italian!

When I went alcohol-free for a month this Spring (thanks to a bad cholesterol test), I lost about 2kg and 4cm around my waist. It messed with other things though- I didn’t get a word written in all that time, other than newsletters. And I didn’t feel any particular energy benefits. Though I ought to have been sleeping better, I wasn’t waking up full of beans and ready to face the day any more so than usual.

But, several credible sources (the folk I listen to most on these subjects are Dr. Peter Attia, and Dr. Rhonda Patrick) suggest that the real benefits to cutting booze come around the three month mark. Kevin at BodyScan said the same thing. So I’ve decided to take 100 days off alcohol. I started on August 19th. Day 100 is November 26th, four days before my birthday.

Why not just cut back?

It's very hard to measure a small amount every now and then. Sure, I bet I could get most of the benefits if I just had one glass of wine on a Friday night. I've previously established with sleep monitors that a glass of wine with dinner has no measurable effect on my sleep (I eat early). But then what happens to the rest of the bottle? How much wine is that really? What if I swapped out the wine for a dram of Lagavulin? It's just much easier to measure “no booze” than figure out “some booze”. And from a self-control issue, it takes very little effort (for me) to have decided to not drink at all, than to stop at one. The hard part is making the decision to stop. Now that's done, thanks to bastard DEXA, it's really no big deal (for me).

I know that other people have much more serious issues with alcoholism or other addictions, so please don't read this as minimising their struggles. And I can think of several life events that could occur that would lead to me immediately abandoning this experiment in favour of getting blootered. So no judgement.

The Pros and Cons of alcohol restriction

You may find the pro/con analysis I do for any intervention a useful rule of thumb, so here goes.

Cons first (always):

1. Is there any known, or likely, health downside? If someone were to suggest going without vegetables for 100 days, or going without protein, or going without exercise, or without in-person social interaction, I’d want to see an awful lot of peer-reviewed studies suggesting that it was a good idea. But there is no known health benefit (that actually stands up to scrutiny) of consuming alcohol. So I won’t be sacrificing any useful nutrients. The polyphenols in wine? I get way more of them from blueberries and dark chocolate.

2. The most common downsides of any intervention are time and money. Exercise costs time. Supplements cost money. Cutting out alcohol saves money and takes no time.

3. Alcohol has been a major component of Western culture since at ancient times. The slaves that built the pyramids were fed a kind of beer. 2600 years later Jesus's first miracle was turning water into wine. 2000 years on, not much has changed. Just about every major event is marked with booze of some kind. We drink with friends, we drink to celebrate success, to commiserate in disaster, to raise a toast or to drown a sorrow. Wine, beer, spirits of every kind have been part of our culture (and many others) since forever, and there is a huge amount of artistry that goes into creating a perfect wine to go with your steak, or the smokiest of single malts. That's the only thing that makes this in any way difficult: the sheer number of times already (it's been less than a fortnight!) when I've had to risk being thought anti-social to decline an offered drink. People who like to drink (like me!) can take this as a critique of their current habits. Nothing could be further from the truth. But cutting out alcohol does carry a social risk.

I worked out that the last time I went 100 days with no booze I was 13. It’s been nearly 40 years since I last tried this, and it’s just an experiment, not a moral position.

So the worst-case scenario is I get no noticeable benefit (but save some money), and lose out on some gustatory delight, and some people will find me stand-offish. I can live with that, for SCIENCE. I don't judge other people by what they choose to drink, so have no interest in the judgements of those that do.

Pros:

1. There is good reason to suppose that I’ll cut the visceral fat down, because it’s happened before (between my first two DEXA scans, in May and August 2024 which established a clear correlation between waist size and visceral fat quantity), and because of the waist reduction this year, in just 33 days of no alcohol.

2. There ought to be improvements in sleep quality. This is very hard to measure, and regular readers will know that I’ve tried several different sleep trackers and found problems with all of them. The only metric that seems at all reliable is heart rate. With alcohol, my heart rate is higher and more erratic when sleeping; without it, it’s lower and steadier. I've confirmed this many times since getting my first sleep tracker in 2017.

3. It’s a clear break from a habit I know is not healthy, and a fairer test of sobriety. I wouldn’t necessarily judge the effects of a diet or exercise program after just a month, so it seems reasonable to give no booze a fair crack of the whip.

The best case scenario is that I get amazing health and vitality benefits from this. But that will raise the issue of do I go back or not? I’ll have to entirely re-think the place that alcohol plays in my way of life. So I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of hoping that it doesn’t help much.

It’s important to keep any test to just one variable. If I replaced booze with doughnuts I could reasonably expect to not lose any visceral fat. So I’m giving myself a couple of weeks to let my usual dietary rules slip a bit (I had four slices of my daughter’s banana bread after dinner last Sunday, with marmalade) but once I’m back from Swords of the Renaissance this weekend I’ll be pretty careful about keeping the rest of my diet as it was.

And finally…

I intend to report back here (maybe even with another DEXA scan) in due course. But I keep my friends on Sword People, and my newsletter subscribers updated on all sorts of things, including my various health experiments. Join us there, or sign up for the newsletter (or both!).

And let me just re-iterate: I'm running a health experiment. I have no moral problem with alcohol, and I don't think of myself as an alcoholic. If alcohol is damaging your health, or getting in the way of your goals, feel free to try 100 days off, or better yet get professional help. But it says nothing about your moral worth whether you drink or not.

Update at 50 Days

50 days into this experiment: so far, so good. The hard part was making the decision. Once it was decided, not drinking is normal. There are open bottles of booze in the house, but no temptation. Every now and then I fancy a drink, but the urge passes quickly. This was as true on day 1 as it is on day 50.

The closest thing to an exception has been a couple of social events in pubs, where I had a low-alcohol (0.5% or lower ABV) beer. I’ve done that twice. I don’t think it matters particularly, but I’ve decided to be careful in the last 50 days to stay off even that.

My weight is down about a kilo and a half (3.5lb), and my waist is down about 2cm. These are averages: weight fluctuates a lot during the day and from day to day: have a glass of water and you gain half a pound or so. Eat more fibre the day before and there’s more water held in your gut. So I measure weight and waist every day, and average them up over the week. Waist is especially problematic to measure, as it’s me with a tape measure, trying to be consistent about exactly where on my body I’m putting it, and exactly how tight, at what point in my breathing cycle. Sucking in my gut gets me down to 84, expanding as much as possible gets me to 96 (which is significantly smaller than my relaxed measurement in May 2024). So I’m not treating these figures as hard or accurate, but they are a reasonable guide to progress.

The oddest thing about this is that all of the weight and waist gains occurred in the first 25 days; they have been basically stable since then. Though I suppose it’s possible I’ve been losing fat and gaining muscle (or the other way round) since then. My weight training is the most reliable guide to muscle mass until the next DEXA scan, and I’m getting gradually stronger (as one would expect), so I doubt I’m losing significant muscle mass. I’m also careful to keep my protein intake quite high (about 1.5g/1kg of body mass, so about 120g/day for me).

I’m not sure if I’m sleeping better or not. I don’t wake up feeling any more rested than I did before, but I have several times slept a lot longer than I used to, for no apparent reason. I’m hoping that my brain is adapting to the lack of booze and getting better at staying asleep, but it’s too early to tell. Sleeping longer means I’m waking up later, so my usual habit of getting an hour or so of writing in before the house wakes up isn’t happening, but that’s ok; I seem to be productive enough.

On balance, this has been underwhelming in terms of health gains so far. I was expecting significantly more benefits already, given that I’ve come down from drinking an average of a whole bottle of wine every day. But who knows, maybe the next 50 days will hold some surprises.

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Salt, Steel, and Serbian Hospitality in Belgrade

I flew to Belgrade last week to attend the Sword and Balkan event. I arrived on Thursday evening and spent Friday exploring downtown Belgrade to get a sense of Serbian culture. I’ll write that up properly next, but in the meantime: if you’re visiting Serbia, do not skip the National Museum on Republic Square…

The event began on Saturday morning, and right from the start it felt different. We were all invited to break off a piece of bread, dip it in salt, and eat it (I just had the salt, being allergic to wheat). This symbolic act made us part of the family—and that sense of familial warmth and camaraderie set the tone for the whole weekend. Literally everyone I interacted with was relaxed, friendly, and there to enjoy some good swordy fun. It was especially nice to catch up with Francesco Lodà after more than 20 years!

The event’s principal organiser, Željko Glumac, was a game designer before devoting himself fully to swords—and I’ve never encountered a more gamified (in the best possible way) fencing event. There was a creative and intricate token system: participants earned tokens through various activities and could use them to bid for spots in the final tournament, choosing weapons like rapier, smallsword, and so on. You could win tokens from fellow fencers in challenges—unless, when revealing your secret team card (Fiore, Hutton, etc.), it turned out you were on the same team! When challenging instructors, they would award you 1–3 tokens based on the quality of your fencing (regardless of the score).

No wonder the reception table looked like this:

The reception table with bread, salt, and a lot of gaming tokens

That’s Željko on the left.

I knew Željko is a Capoferro man, but I also knew he’d be swamped with organisational duties, so I kidnapped him early Saturday for a quick fencing match. It was a joy. Sometimes fencing feels like an argument between people who don’t speak the same language—but this was a vigorous and friendly conversation between two native speakers of the same dialect.

My class that morning was Skill Development with the Longsword. About 26 students attended, with a wide range of experience levels. They were all a pleasure to teach, and I think everyone got something useful from it.

Guy Windsor with longsword students at Sword and Balkan in Belgrade 2025

I’d twisted my right knee on Wednesday morning, so I was being careful—short lunges, no unnecessary pressure—but still managed to get in two bouts after lunch. First, with Thomas Tassie on smallsword (a quick fencer with a lovely circular parry in quarte), and then with Branislav Petrović, another Capoferro fencer. He hit me with Capoferro’s scanso della vita—a rare thing to see in freeplay! But a little later I got him back with the same technique, which may have been my personal fencing highlight of the weekend.

By evening I was fairly worn out, but I really enjoyed chatting with Viktor, Veronika, and Elay. Fortunately, V and V are early-to-bed types like me, so they gave me a lift back to the hotel and we turned in around 11:15. But I must say—those Serbs understand carnivory at a high level.

On Sunday morning, I did a thorough physio session to keep the knee and neck issues at bay, and then fenced with Karl Rapp from Vienna. We hit each other quite a bit—but he managed to catch me twice with the same move: a thrust to the flank after covering my blade with his left hand. Son of a bitch! (In the best possible way.) It was a delightful bout, swiftly followed by another with Viktor Kachovski—good thing we both got to bed at a decent hour!

That day I taught a smaller class, Skill Development with the Rapier, which meant we could go deeper into the subject. Again, the group included both beginners and veterans with over a decade of experience, and again, everyone was a joy to teach. Special thanks to Pavle Ilijašević (in the red and black poofy pants) for demonstrating with me—with sharps!

Guy Windsor with rapier students, sword and balkan 2025

After lunch (and a bit of tech wrestling with the projector), I gave an hour-long lecture on syllabus design. I think it went well—when I formally ended the session, the room stayed for another 45-minute Q&A, mostly on pedagogy. I sometimes ask the audience to vote on the best question of the session. This time, Daniel won the prize (a Swordschool patch) for getting me going on teaching mixed-level classes.

You may have noticed the total lack of photos or videos of me fencing. That’s because I was having too much fun to remember I even own a phone.

The event wrapped up with the challenge tournament. I was absolutely knackered by this point, but it was clearly enormous fun for everyone involved—team members cheering each other on and nobody taking it too seriously.

All in all, a thoroughly delightful event. Željko and his team got the tone exactly right—and everything else flowed from there.

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Swordschool is 24!

Swordschool turned 24 years old yesterday! March 17th 2001 saw the very first class I taught as a full-time professional instructor, at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki.

Not the whole Olympic Stadium. A small room somewhere inside it. I was expecting about 6 to 12 people, and something over 70 showed up. Some of them are still training now.

I don’t have a photo of that very day, but digging around through the archives I found some golden oldies.

Here’s what a rapier class looked like in (I think) 2002:

Rapier class at swordschool in about 2002
Guy leading a rapier class a very long time ago

And the photoshoot for The Swordsman’s Companion in 2003 was very serious.

photographer shooting pics of two fencers
Jari Pallari, Topi Mikkola, and me.

And lots of hard work.

Nikodemus, Ville, me, Topi, Rami, and Jari going over the photos.

And nobody fooled around because it was serious hard work.

Ninja versus Falchion. Miika and Nikodemus “training” while Zach watches.

The School depended so entirely on the goodwill and trust of those early adopters, who had no good reason to believe I knew what I was doing, but turned up to class anyway.

So to celebrate Swordschool turning 24, you can use the code SWORDSCHOOL24 at checkout to get 24% off all digital products (not printed books, t-shirts etc, sorry. They cost too much to produce!). You can find courses at courses.swordschool.com, and books, audiobooks, and print-at-home pdfs of my card game Audatia at swordschool.shop

Just use the code at checkout to get the discount. The code expires on March 31st.

Thanks for coming along on the Swordschool ride, whenever it was you started!

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Lenard Voelker: Gentleman, Scholar, and an inspirational Martial Artist.

 

Lenard headshot

In 2011 I dedicated my book The Medieval Dagger to “Lenard Voelker: Gentleman, Scholar, and an inspirational Martial Artist.”

A few days before Christmas I got a call from Lenard’s grandson Kyle to let me know that my old friend had died. ‘Old’ in both senses- we have been friends for over 20 years, and he was into his eighties. You may not know who he was, so I’ll sketch out for you the reasoning behind that dedication. It will give you a sense of the man as I knew him.

I first met Lenard at one of the early ISMAC events, probably in 2001. He was instantly identifiable by his profusion of white hair, and his posture- he was pretty tall, and a lifetime of politely stooping for us short-arses had left him a bit of a hunch. He was very easy to underestimate, a mistake I never made again after our first fencing match. Smallswords. But not the delicate stand-offish fencing that those who don’t understand smallswords might be thinking of. No. Lenard ‘fenced’ smallsword the same way he ‘sparred’ with a knife. A vicious flurry of aggression and speed, completely at odds with his usual gentle demeanour. Let me put it this way: fencing with Lenard was a pleasure and an education: but there’s no way in hell I’d ever want to fight him.

It says a great deal about the man that at the same event where we had a little ceremony presenting him with a sword celebrating his 50 years (so far) of training in martial arts, he paid me for a private lesson. I was about 30. He would have slaughtered me in any kind of fight, but he was happy to learn from anyone, and very excited by the growing field of historical martial arts. He epitomised the humility that is supposed to go along with being a martial artist, but very rarely does. Inspirational martial artist, indeed.

Lenard with a big bowie in one hand and a sixgun in the other.He was generous and kind in all sorts of ways. At (probably) the second event we were at together, he brought a couple of books for me. Just because he thought I might like them. And this became something of a ritual. We met at many events, and he would always have something I would never have thought to pick out for myself, but which were always interesting, and often useful. One such book was restauranteur Danny Meyer’s book Setting the Table. Another was Plato’s The Last Days of Socrates. I reciprocated with Ellis Amdur’s Duelling with O-Sensei, and others. What a scholar, with a breadth and depth of reading you don’t find often.

The last long conversation I had with him in person was in his garden, drinking beer and eating barbecue with him and his lovely wife Mai, and some friends, just chatting about martial arts and everything else, putting the Universe to rights. Even though we hadn’t seen each other in person for far too long, it was somehow entirely in Lenard’s character that the grandson he helped to raise would, in the midst of his own grief, take the time to call in person to let me know of his passing. What a gentleman.

Most of our in-person meetings occurred before social media was really a thing, so I don’t actually have any photos of us together. If you happen to have one, please share it with me.

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2024 Roundup, and plans for 2025

Guy with three Mexican students, all with thought bubbles. Mexico City 2024

7 Countries. 4 Continents. 6 books. Two online courses. And one really good idea (I think).

It’s kind of absurd to summarise an entire year in a single blog post, especially such a busy and yet somehow still productive year as the last 12 months have been, but I need to get a handle on what my actual choices were. It’s all very well to say you prioritise x or emphasise y, but looking back you may well find that you actually prioritised z.

It seems that this year I’ve prioritised pushing books out the door (sometimes faster than they should be), and travelling as much as I can handle. Leaving aside family travel (such as starting the year on holiday in Italy with my wife and kids, taking my wife to Porto for a weekend, and the whole family to Spain for a summer holiday, and visiting my mum in Scotland (which is a whole other country)), in 2024 I went to:

  • Helsinki, in February and again in May, teaching seminars for the Gladiolus School of Arms (which I’ll be doing again in mid-January 2025)
  • Singapore in April, to teach seminars for PHEMAS
  • Wellington, New Zealand, in April, to teach a seminar for a friend’s club (I segued through Melbourne on my way home to catch up with friends)
  • The USA: Lawrence, Kansas to shoot video with Jessica Finley, Madison Wisconsin to teach a couple of seminars, and Minneapolis likewise
  • Potsdam, Germany, for Swords of the Renaissance
  • Mexico City for the Panoplia Iberica, and then Queretaro for a smaller event.

That’s a total of 73 nights away from home for work trips. Damn. I’ve loved it, and will be doing some travelling in 2025, but both my daughters have major exams coming up in June (A-levels for one, GCSEs for the other), so I need to be home for much of at least the first half of the year.

Publishing

In January 2024 I published From Your Head to Their Hands: how to write, publish, and market training manuals for historical martial artists. Perhaps the nichiest book I’ve ever written, but it was there in my head in between editing drafts of the wrestling book (see below), so I got it out of my head and into your hands. See what I did there?

In March I published the long-awaited and technically “first” volume in the From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice series: The Wrestling Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi. Only 4 years after what will become the third volume (The Longsword Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi). It took me that long because the pandemic stopped me from going to Kansas to shoot the supporting video material with Jessica Finley. Well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. It was also just bloody hard to write.

The second volume (on the Dagger Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi) should be out in early 2025, and at that point I’ll re-cover the Wrestling and Longsword volumes and make them look and behave more like a book series.

Proof if ever you needed it that there’s no need to do things in order.

In August I published Get Them Moving: How to Teach Historical Martial Arts. This is another super-nichey book. I’m not aiming at the mass market here, just clearing things out of my head so I can get on with other things. Books do that: they simply insist on being written and published, and won’t let me alone until I’ve got them out the door.

I also managed to edit all the new material for my Medieval Dagger Course, which I had shot in Kansas. I also have a bunch of longsword material to publish, and an entire course on German Medieval Wrestling (Jessica Finley’s work).

In September I published the celebratory 20th Anniversary edition of my first book, The Swordsman’s Companion, and I’ve made the ebook free on all platforms. The book is hopelessly out of date as regards interpretation, but it’s an interesting window into the state of the art as it was in 2004. And it got a lot of people into historical martial arts.

In November we published the magnificent facsimile of the Getty manuscript, with my complete translation. Unfortunately that ran into some bizarre technical problems after the first 50 or so orders had come through, so at the time of writing we are fixing the problem and reprinting the books. I also created a companion volume which includes the complete transcription as well; it’s not intended as a standalone, but it is finished and has been sent out to all the buyers of the facsimile, so I guess that counts as two more books, taking the year’s total to a somewhat absurd 6. If you consider that my first book came out 20 years ago, and in that time I’ve written and published about 18 books: a full third of them in this year alone.

Of course, publishing comes after writing, and a lot of this year’s output were mostly or at least partly written over the last few years; they just happened to be ready all at once.

My podcast The Sword Guy hit 200 episodes in December 2024, and I’ve decided to pause a while to think about what I want to do for the next 20, 50, or 100 episodes.

Business stuff

I had two main goals for 2024: to figure out how to open up my platform to other instructors, and to create partnerships with other businesses serving the HMA community. I’ve made progress on both those fronts.

Esko Ronimus’s course “Introduction to Bolognese Swordsmanship” went live on courses.swordschool.com in October this year. This is different to the collaborations I’ve done before (such as Jessica Finley’s Medieval Wrestling course) because I was not directly involved in creating it. I didn’t direct the shoot, edit the video, or take part in the production in any way. I just provided a platform to host it on, and some advice on structuring the course and marketing it. So far both Esko and I are happy with the results, and I’m open to requests from other instructors…

If you’ve bought a sword from Malleus Martialis in the past year you may well have got a discount code for one or other of my online courses, or a code to get one of my ebooks for free. This kind of thing is good for Malleus (they can offer more to their customers at no cost to themselves, and make an affiliate fee on any course sales), good for the customer (they get free or discounted stuff they are likely to be interested in), and me (I get some of the course sales money, and someone who may not know my work becomes familiar with it, and may go and buy a bunch more of my books). So if you’re in the business, and want to set something up, let me know.

Research stuff

This year there has been one significant change to my interpretation of Fiore’s Armizare: the three turns of the sword. This doesn’t change much about how we actually do things, but it affects the underlying theory behind the art, and solves a mystery that has been plaguing us for decades. Full credit to Dario Alberto Magnani. You can listen to the entire conversation here.

It also meant updating my translation of the Flower of Battle: I deleted one word. A very critical word. “Also”. Yes, it makes a difference.

Plans for 2025

I came back from Mexico with one clear vision of a problem to solve. Namely, I travel about a lot giving seminars, and so I get to see a lot of students, but only every now and then, and many of them I’ll never see again. This is unsatisfying. I don’t get to see the long-term effects of the things they have learned from me. I don’t get to see them develop over time. Of course there is some continuity, especially when I go back to teach at clubs regularly, but it’s not ideal for either me or the students.

So what to do about it? The thing that blows the students’ minds most consistently are insights into swordsmanship mechanics. Ask Leon in Mexico or Rigel in Singapore about the rapier guard quarta, and how stringering works. The look of utter startlement on students’ faces when they get it is the absolute best thing. I’m thinking about creating an online course that goes into the absolute fundamentals (ie the most important but least flashy) of how sword mechanics work, and making it free: but required for anyone signing up to one of my seminars when I travel. This will let me cover a lot more stuff in the class itself, and prepare them better to actually make use of the insights. And it will hopefully bring them more into my orbit, make them more likely to show up on swordpeople.com with good questions, more likely to come to the next seminar, etc.

I also want to create an online course on Vadi’s longsword (might as well shoot my interpretation of the entire manuscript while we’re at it), publish the dagger volume of From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice, maybe shoot the video for the armoured combat and/or mounted combat volumes, and finish The Armizare Workbook Part Two (which has been more than half written for over a year… but is still stuck in hard-drive purgatory). Part One came out in 2022, and I meant to get Part Two out in mid ’23. Oh well.

I’m planning to make all of the supporting video for From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice (so, clips of every play from Folio 1 to Folio 31v of the Getty ms) free online. They are currently only visible through the links in the books. But making them open to all should help my fellow scholars, and also provide advertising for the books. Another win-win.

The key thing to remember here is that planning is vital but plans are useless. There is no way to predict the future, and all sorts of things might get in the way of any or all of my intentions for the year. But having a think about what I want to accomplish, and why, makes it much more likely that I’ll be able to look back on 2025 with some degree of satisfaction. Let’s see what actually happens…

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Viva México, part two: the amazing food! and some tips for travellers

Making friends with a taco stand chef

You may recall that my recent trip to Mexico blew me away. What a country, what people.

And yes, what food.

I’ve had lots of “Mexican” food before: some awesome, some so-so. But nothing prepared me for the breadth and depth of the Mexican food experience. I ate everywhere from people’s homes, to roadside shacks, to decent restaurants, and it was all excellent. I’ll kick off this post with some basic traveller advice on not getting sick while travelling to such places, then just go through the dishes I experienced in order. With photos!

Traveller’s Tips

1. Do not drink the tap water. At all, ever. I’d recommend brushing your teeth in filtered water, and hold a mouthful of filtered water in your mouth when having a shower, to prevent you accidentally swallowing anything. Spit it out when you’re done in the shower.

2. Suero. This is a mix of rehydration salts that you can get at any pharmacy. Mix a packet in with a litre of filtered water to rehydrate if you do get sick. Throw away any undrunk mixture after 24 hours.

3. Probiotics. Much of the intestinal distress associated with travelling to Mexico comes from a fight between your existing gut biome, and the bacteria you’re exposed to while you’re there. They are not friends, and those Mexicans fight dirty. So start taking probiotics before you go, and keep taking them while you’re there, whether you feel well or not. I’m quite impressed with the Enterogermina ampoules that I got in Mexico, and with the Probio 7 50+ that I got when I got home.

For thoughts on managing jet lag, see here.

Rusa, or agua minerale preparada

This is just a glass of mineral water, with lime juice, and salt around the rim of the glass. Putting the salt round the glass like that means you can take as much or as little of it as you want/need. And the lime juice is great for vitamin C and digestion. Honestly, why drink plain water ever again? It's available just about everywhere, and superb for keeping you hydrated- much better than plain water would be. I failed to take a photo of it, sorry.

Enmoladas

a dish of enmoladas, covered in mole sauce, with white stuff on top. Classic Mexican food.

My first meal in Mexico was breakfast enmoladas. These were stunningly good. They look like a dessert, but they’re not. They are tortillas stuffed with chicken, in a mole, which is based on cocoa, but is not what most people think of as chocolate. It’s a bit spicy, a bit savoury, a bit umami, a thousand percent delicious. This was served with coffee and carrot juice.

Pozole

a bowl of pozole, an orange soup/stew with vegetables on top. Food from the Aztecs!

This is a traditional Aztec dish, a kind of spicy stew. They have changed one major ingredient though. It used to be made with the flesh of your enemies, but is now made with pork. It’s one of those classic dishes which get fought over- which part of Mexico has the best pozole? I couldn’t possibly say- I had it a couple of times, and they were differently fabulous. Pairs well with a dark Modelo.

Chile en Nogada

a chile en nogada, red white and green.

This dish is only available for a short time each year, which happens to coincide with Mexican independence day (September 16th). The red, white, and green of the dish represent the colours on the Mexican flag. The large poblano chile is stuffed with meat and fruit, and covered in the white walnut sauce. It’s another somewhat sweet, somewhat umami, utterly divine dish.

Elote

Elote with friends Ana and Leon

Mexican cuisine is based on corn the way European cuisine is based on wheat. It’s everywhere, and sometimes it’s just on its own, boiled or grilled over charcoal from a roadside cart, late at night, with friends. I had the version with chilli powder and lime. My lips stung for ages, but it was totally worth it.

Barbacoa

This is not barbecue, as in meat grilled over charcoal or smoked. This is meat that it soft and juicy and tender from being roasted in a pit in the ground, much like a Hawaian imu. You can also do it in the oven. I failed to take a picture because I was too busy eating it.

Tetelas con chapulines

tetelas con chapulines, triangular tortillas stuffed with crickets

This is a Oaxacan delicacy. A tetela is a triangular folded tortilla, stuffed with food. In this case, crickets. They are slightly spicy, quite umami, and delicious. I also had tetelas stuffed with tasajo (a kind of dried meat), and huitlacoche, which is a mushroom that only grows on corn.

I didn’t take pictures of the quesadillas con carnitas, nor the rose-petal flavoured ice-cream. Nor so many other culinary delights. And, let the record state, the only time I did actually get sick was after eating at a place that specialised in American-style food (it was open and close by, no other reason to go there).

It’s funny to think that Mexican food outside Mexico is mostly tacos and burritos. Which is like Italian food outside Italy being mostly pizza and pasta. Yes, there’s a lot of both in Italy, but they are just the tip of a gastronomic iceberg. Just so with Mexico. While there is a lot of pork involved, there is also a huge tradition of vegetarian food (such as the tetelas con huitlacoche). And yes there’s a lot of corn there too, but not in the chiles en nogada.

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Viva la Panoplía! y Viva México!

This is supposed to be a review of the Panoplía Iberoamericana, which I attended over the weekend, teaching several workshops. The event was excellent, a complete delight to attend and teach at. But my hosts here have gone the extra thousand miles to show me the best of their city and culture, and the only way I can think to keep things straight is to just take it in order.

I’ll skip over the food entirely, because it deserves and will get its own separate post. Let me just say that Mexican food outside Mexico can be fabulous, but the sheer breadth of dishes that I’d never even heard of but which blew me away makes me think that I don’t know Mexican food at all. Pozole. Chile en Nogado. Tetelas de Chapolines. And on and on.

I’m writing this in a slight lull in what has been a whirlwind few days. I arrived in Mexico City last Wednesday night, and spent Thursday visiting (after a breakfast of enmoladas, oh my goddess) an extraordinary presidential private collection of guns and other weapons (no photos allowed), and the utterly stupendous Anthropological Museum. I had no idea of the complexity of pre-conquista Mexican cultures. We think of the Aztecs and the Mayans, but honestly that’s like tacos and burritos. The most famous of a very broad range. It would take a week or more to properly absorb this museum, so I’ll stick with two highlights.

The stunning Sun Stone:

This thing is huge- so big that you could put it on the ground and have a sword fight on it. Which is apparently what it was used for! Sacrificial gladiatorial combat. It’s so much a part of Mexican identity that it’s on the 10 peso coin.

And I had no idea about the Codices of the Mixtec people (or even that the Mixtecs themselves existed). These are folded-up parchment documents that have a kind of pictographic writing on them. Sadly no fighting manuals, but a written record of aspects of their culture.

one of the Mixtec codices

The Panoplía Itself

The Panoplia began on Friday, and I did my usual thing of talking to lots of people, working with anyone who asked on whatever they were interested in, signing a lot of books (hurrah!), and I also led a discussion on balancing academic rigour with fencing skill. In other words, balancing knowledge, and skill development. It’s something I think every historical fencer should think about, and decide for themselves where they want to focus. There is room in the Art for pure academics, and pure competitive fencers. And pure “train to win real swordfights”. Most of us lie somewhere in the middle.

Saturday began for me with an impromptu bit of smallsword with Neuro, Arturo, and Leon. It started with me showing them some stuff from Angelo, and ended with a very friendly bit of light fencing. Which set me up perfectly for my longsword mechanics class. It was rather full (about double the signed-up students actually attended). My goal with mechanics classes is to get everyone moving better than they were before, and to generate at least one significant ‘aha!’ moment. I think we managed it. (I’m still waiting for the class photos- if you took one, please send it to me!)

After lunch (oh my goddess) I had my Capoferro rapier mechanics class, which was a bit smaller, and started with everyone present, so it was easier to build the experience for the students. I saw many, many, eyes flashing wide as something tiny and apparently trivial made all the difference in how the sword functioned. It was extremely satisfying!

This was followed by the official event party, which was held in the Hacienda de Cortes.

I mean, really.

I was a bit of a party pooper, going home at about 1.30am. And on Sunday morning my hosts and I were (we thought) a bit early getting to the event. It was the free-fencing not-tournament process that the event’s godfather Pedro Velasco uses (which you may recall from the Panoplia Iberica, in December 2023). But it turns out that after an evening of Mezcal, beer, wine (thanks again, Carlos!) these folk were hard at it in the sunshine:

Personally, I needed a bit of maintenance so I found a quiet shady spot and did some physio, stretching, breathing form, and push-ups. I then got chatting to a group lead by one of the instructors (Gaute Raigorodsky) about Fiore mechanics. At one point I said ‘get some swords, let’s try it’ which inevitably lead to an hour or so of mechanics training in another shady spot. You can go much deeper with a small group that already know the basics.

And then the Panoplía was over… except for the after-party. Oh my god, the Mezcal!

Post-Panoplía “recovery”

Monday started nice and slow with my lovely hosts Elena and Eduardo taking me to breakfast (which alone deserves a post of its own). Here we are: nice to know that I’m not the only hat wearer! My Mexican sun hat was a gift from my hosts.

(my very witty t-shirt is by the excellent Stephan Eichelmann).

After which we went to find the elusive Axolotl in the extraordinary lagoons of Xochimilco.

the lagoons of Xochimilco- jungly venice

And we did!

the axolotl

Then on Tuesday it was off to see one of the wonders of the world: the pyramids of Teotihuacan. Words fail me.

the sun pyramid at Teotihuacan, with Guy Windsor in the foreground

I rounded off Tuesday evening by teaching a Fiore mechanics class for Jorge Chavez and Eduardo Mayeya's club Arthenea. It was rather off-the-cuff: we decided to do it in the car on the way to the pyramids. But I think it was well received.

The organisers of the event (in no particular order), Jorge Chavez, Ana Tavera, Eduardo Mayeya, and Pedro Velasco have done an amazing job putting together the first (and I really hope not the last) of the Mexican edition of the Panoplía, and an even better job of looking after their guests. What a place. What people. Oh my. Muchisimas gracias a todos!

And a final note: if you have photos of my classes from the event, please send them to me to incorporate into this post. Thanks!

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