SENI 2004 – 24-25th April – Birmingham NEC
By Melanie Box
Peter Foster (former Instructor) and I made an extremely early start for SENI 2004 by me leaving my house at 6am on Saturday morning to pick him up. We got going properly at 6:30am and finally arrived at Birmingham NEC at 11:00am. We first of all walked around blindly through NEC checking out all the stands and the general layout. It was stifling hot and all the stands and demos were well covered by spectators. We wanted to sample as many arts as possible however, we noticed that not all events mentioned in the programme were running on schedule which was a little disappointing.
I did manage however to link up with Morphus (Paul). What nice man! He was much shorter than I expected ?. We met only briefly and managed to mention that he should really see the Gatka demo when it was on, as last year it was breathtaking. Here’s hoping he managed to see it!
Shortly after meeting up with him I attended the Pat O’Malley seminar – Filipino Stick & Dagger Combat at 2:00pm in the Forum Hall. I managed to link up with Matt Sylvester whilst there and we trained together in a few techniques. He surprised me with a double defence at one stage and he said it was due to his Kenpo (spelling?) training. We were given a technique by Pat and then we were encouraged to “make it our own”. The seminar lasted for an hour and a half and afterwards Matt and I went to one side and caught up on both forums. He really is as excitable about his martial arts training as he comes across in his posts. Unfortunately he was only up for the one day – but still grateful we met up. Watched several demos during the course of the day – watched the RAF display team doing self defence techniques (which seemed to have a huge presence this year at SENI), some Tai Chi, and Tang Soo Do and then left for the bed and breakfast we had booked in Harborne.
The following morning we arrived at 10:30am and watched a few more displays to include BFFA – Street Self Defence (which I have to say I thought was pretty good), Kuk Sool Won, a couple of MMA Amateur fights and some kickboxing. Today wasn’t quite as busy, as I would imagine a lot of people came on Saturday so that they could watch the Pain and Glory fight in the evening, so they had left by today.
There seemed to be so many trade stands there, which is great for the clubs I guess but not a lot of help to your average joe like me. I don’t want to buy 30 T-shirts or weapons – so I couldn’t really afford to fork out £30 for a hoodie, etc. I did buy a T-shirt for a tenner in the end saying “Don’t think of it as losing, think of it as being beaten by a girl” Hehehe :D and I also bought a pair of Sai. I figured if I bought some it might encourage me to find out how to use them. Female logic – leave me alone!!
During my walk around I came across the Fudebakudo Stand. When asked I mentioned I got the book last year and was offered a “Time Wasting Towel” for £3.00. An amusing little present for Peter. I mentioned that I was a Moderator of a forum and the stall owner said “Oh, Melanie from Martial Arts Planet?” (This is happening way too often!) It turns out that since I mentioned them on the forum last year they have been watching our forum and saw that I was coming back again. Nice to feel wanted I guess ?. He mentioned they have completed a brand new Martial Arts Quiz – this has only just been set up on their website. By all accounts it doesn’t sound very easy, but please check it out at http://www.fudebakudo.com/cgi-bin/quiz.pl
Overall I was pretty disappointed by the whole event, even though it was
quite a bit bigger than last year. Next year I intend to come down Saturday
evening for the B & B and just go to the Sunday. There is only so many
times you want to look at the same thing and not have anywhere to sit after
all. There was loads of partially naked women – which set back the
Womens Lib Movement fifty years in the past two days. No wonder we don’t
get taken very seriously! I hope that some of this feedback gets back to
the organisers. Last year was brilliant as far as I was concerned and I
hope they can bring back that level in time for next year. This is just
my opinion of course
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