When I was little, I used to fence foil. I recently returned to my old club where I was warmly welcomed back - and beaten resolutely by everybody; mostly due to my complete lack of fitness, but also (I say) due to the rules having changed. Indeed, everyone said that the timings are now different, with a longer contact time required and a shorter cut-off from the first hit registering, such that stop hits in foil now make the sport resemble epee. However, I just tonight discovered another difference that I've pondered about over the last few months and now discovered to be true: the lights have also been swapped over. See Laurent Harper's video of the 1993 British Championships (beating Nick Bell - another old name who I hear is still around) for verification that I'm not mad.

House-sitting a flat in the city, large garden with grass and trees and railway at the end, it's a good place to sit and work during the day. Added bonus are the 3 eggs daily provided by my companions, the chickens. Well, was meant to be: was shown how to retrieve the eggs from within the "egg-loo" - essentially a chicken coop, allegedly designed and marketed by a company called OmLet who come and install it for you - on the first day by my friend (a relative of the owner)... returned into the apartment and back to the light (it was night outside) to discover his arm was alive with crawling things: very small, who knows what? Well, we figured that out quickly when we found a tube of "Red mite powder" on a shelf . Red mites? They're only little, but vicious, apparently - google returns a very informative pdf which explains that they are also known as Dermanyssus gallinae, a renowned chicken parasite that is seemingly impossible to eradicate and infects chicken farms (and other birds) throughout the country.