I've been involved in martial arts since 1992; learning Karate with Oxford Sport and Traditional Martial Arts under Paul Wood for 8 years, where I graded to 1st Dan and competed in regional and national tournaments. At Manchester I switched from Karate to Wing Tsun Kung Fu under Johnnie Walker. In Shanghai I decided to try a different flavour of Kung Fu and was lucky to be able to train under Master Kai Uwe Pel for a year, learning Seven Star Praying Mantis Kung Fu as well as traditional Chinese weapons. I'm now back on Wing Tsun, which I'm learning with the UK Kung Fu Federation under Lee Heron.
A second lifelong hobby is theatre. I've been involved in an open-air amateur Shakespeare production in St Dogmaels Abbey, Pembrokesire almost every summer since 1989. Roles have included acting, setbuilding, playing in the band and most recently fight choreography (a sword fight and a knights' joust are on YouTube).
Languages and writing systems are another passion: I studied Mandarin before and while living in Shanghai and took brush calligraphy classes with the grade 1 pupils, much to their amusement. I'm currently dabbling in Cocoa and Python programming languages and trying to become familiar with the basics of typography.