Memoirs of a Karate Fighter Read Free

allowed to get in the way of unalloyed hero-worship. His fighting style was also admired as it was more traditional than Lee’s and less clowning than Chan’s. Furthermore, as his films only featured Chinese people we were transported to another world in which the hero wasn’t always a white man, and it was the Japanese, rather than black men, who were the stereotypical bad guys.
    One Friday night, shortly after we had left the Colosseum, Clinton, Errol and I had been chased by a gang of white men armed with clubs. Probably frustrated that they could not find an unaccompanied victim, they had decided to stop their car and chase three teenage boys. We scattered and I ducked into an alley that led into back streets and rear gardens. The men must have sensed easy prey and followed me into the dark. I couldn’t understand it; I was a good athlete but my legs refused to respond, it was as if I were running in a tank of treacle. Breathing hard, I rounded another corner – and something hit me. The impact was severe; arms and legs violently clashed as our bodies collapsed onto the hard ground. Fearing imminent death, I screamed out loud.
    â€œShut up,” croaked a familiar voice, “this way.” It was Clinton: he had returned to help me.
    After a short distance we had to scale a high wire-mesh fence. Within moments the men were on the other side, furiously growling obscenities and shaking the mesh, but we all knew that there was no way they were going to get over the fence. As they continued to hurl their threats I wanted to get away, but Clinton stood his ground with an air of contemptuous indifference. I stared on in disbelief as he opened his flies and began pissing through the mesh. Almost hysterical with rage, the men jumped back, as if Clinton’s urine was a deadly acid.
    On trembling legs, I ran back to the cinema with Clinton hoping to see Errol and to look for the safety of a crowd. “So, Ralph,” he said to me, as we slowed down to walking pace, “are you going to start training with the rest of us?”
    At first I was too angry, or too scared, to speak. My lungs were still burning and my legs shaking as adrenalin continued to course through them. I paused before responding. The training he referred to was in karate at the local YMCA. At first I had been dismissive when Clinton and Leslie started training: I was supposed to be the tough guy of our little group, the one who took part in bare-knuckle fights in order to win money for Clinton’s older brothers, and I had already told him that I did not need this martial arts stuff. But in truth I was wary of getting involved. The YMCA karate club had a fearsome reputation, and I had heard tales, recounted in the most reverential tones, about the instructor who had once beaten up a gang of Hell’s Angels and had knocked out a genuine Chinese kung fu master; about the tough men – including Clinton’s older brothers – who trained there; about injuries; about journeys to the hospital; about guys who thought they could handle themselves but who had quit after just one session. “No,” I had previously told Clinton, “I’ll stick to my athletics.” But now such a response seemed pathetic because I knew that behind Clinton’s question was the idea that we should have stood and fought, that we should have levelled the club-wielding white guys in a fashion similar Wang Yu’s.
    A week later I enrolled at one of Britain’s toughest and most successful karate clubs. In retrospect I am now keenly aware of just how much that decision changed my life, because it was not until I left school and entered the adult world that I fully appreciated just how perilous the place in which I grew up could be.

– Chapter Two –
    There is timing in everything. Timing cannot be mastered without a great amount of practise.
    Miyamoto Musashi –
The Ground Book
    â€œICHI … NI … SAN