Gratitude

 

We’re gonna need a bigger place!

 

During this pandemic I have heard of so many schools closing down, and this is a very sad thing for so many people, both teachers and students.

 

At the time of the first UK lockdown, this coincidentally, happened to be around the time of my ten year lease ending, well for that particular venue anyway (with my school being open for over 30 years, we’ve had a few leases), plus the landlord was wanting the space to have a different use, this meant we were reducing from a 3,650 square feet hall, to a single hired room.

Luckily for us this was not only big enough to cater for the reduction in numbers (unfortunately down to due to job losses etc.), but it was much warmer too!

 

In order to provide for those unable to attend classes, I started teaching zoom classes, well over 250 of them so far and something I am continuing to do.

 

This Tuesday I was in Leeds, after making the 150 mile drive to class (300 miles in total and three hours each way) and arrived at the school to find only one student in attendance, Narinder (pictured above).

 

At 6.55pm I looked at the clock and said to him:

 

“I guess the coach driver is just trying to find a space to drop them all off eh?”

 

Luckily more students did arrive within five minutes after this shot was taken and we did have enough pairs for a great class, but, what I wanted to address what something that Narinder said to me before this, at around 6.45pm that I wanted to share.

 

We were both warming up, at different corners of the room, when out of the blue he said:

 

“You know we really do appreciate this, your driving all the way up here to teach us personally,

to actually training with your directly, a disciple of Ip Chun”

 

To which I was shocked and immediately thanked him for such kind words, but I wanted to do this publicly too, I want to say a big thank you to all the other students who have also continued their studies, and who have also made the effort, I wish to thank not only my students and my wonderful instructors, but to also thank all of you who are still managing to keep going through such difficult times.

 

May I wish you all well and just try to stay with it,

Keep your classes going and we will get through this.