For Want Of A Nail

For about 8 years now, on and off, I’ve been a practitioner of Krav Maga. I have taken a total of 8 gradings, hold the rank of P5 and have trained in Italy, the UK, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel.

I’ve qualified to teach children Krav under Ze’ev Cohen when I took the Kids Instructor Course.

I have completed the General Instructors Course but haven’t graduated yet.

I’ve met Eyal Yanilov several times and interviewed him for this blog and for KMG UK.

I’ve attended seminars for public transport, aeroplane hijacks, adrenaline and 3rd party protection plus many others.

I’ve cured my lifelong phobia of fighting through sparring on day 11, of part 1 of the GIC**.

I run this blog and have published a book about Krav Maga called “Walk In Pieces”. 

I’ve lost a piece of a tooth on my P4 grading and been personally selected by Eyal Yanilov with 9 other people to fight The Bullet Men at the KMG World Tour 2014. 

Basically…I’ve had a lot of fun doing Krav Maga.

The main things Krav has taught me is that ego is dangerous and what my brother might call “the puffy option” is usually the best one (i.e. walking away from confrontation if you can). I’ve become calmer, more self confident and a lot less paranoid through following this discipline. 

My life since 2016 has involved a lot of backpacking. In August of that year I had what might be called a mid-life crisis and decided to give the cat away, sell the car, put most of my stuff in storage and fulfil my dream of going to Australia & New Zealand. During that time I learned to be careful about my personal space and to keep close attention to where I have my stuff. I ALWAYS carried my passport, money and phone on me in a military style hip pouch that you cannot take from me unless I give it to you or you take it from me by force. 

Now that I’m settled in Rome teaching English I give security a high priority in my life. I share a flat with 2 other guys and my bedroom door has a lock, as does my wardrobe. Before I go out I put all valuables I’m not taking with me into the wardrobe, lock it and then hide the key. I then check the balcony window is secure and lock the bedroom door, hiding that key too. 

I use a bicycle to get about so it has not one, or two but THREE locks. One for the frame, one for the front wheel (one of those awful, quick-release things) and one for the saddle. When I stop to go shopping I strip everything from the bike that could be stolen. 

When cycling I am constantly aware of the traffic and practice what could romantically be called “defensive biking”, i.e. I anticipate drivers and pedestrians acting like idiots and plan accordingly. So far I’ve had no accidents but a fair few near misses.

A couple of months ago I read about the Cooper colour code and adopted it as a way to get by each day. 

Basically I’m someone who’s pretty careful. 

And then, 2 weeks ago, I got my phone snatched at about 2am in central Rome. 

I was walking around using my phone’s GPS to try and find the night bus stop when a guy approached me, grinning broadly and and said “Ciao!” like all he wanted to do was be my bestest pal. My instincts kicked in and I immediately put the phone in the inside pocket of my jacket. 

The bloke walked along next to me and asked casually “Why did you put the phone away?”

I replied “So no one can steal it”.

“They can”, he said and after a few more seconds, he lunged over, stuck his hand in the pocket, grabbed the phone and ran off. 

The reason he got away with this……

I was very, very drunk.

Luckily my wallet and money were in the other pocket so I got the bus home eventually and woke up that morning feeling very sorry for myself. Phone gone, contacts lost, messages too. Only good thing was that I had extremely good security on the phone which means that the thieving toad who took it can’t access the contents. Once the self pity wore off I realised just how lucky I had been. I didn’t get hurt and this wasn’t even a mugging, merely a street robbery with minimal physical contact. The state I was in that night, I would have been no good in fight and losing the phone was a minor inconvenience compared to what could have happened. Only Jackie Chan can fight when he's drunk and still win.

The one and only reason he was able to reach into my jacket and grab the phone was because I hadn’t done up the third button. Believing no one could get in there I’d settled for doing up the first two. I’ve tried quickly darting my hand in that pocket since this incident occurred and 4 times out of 5 I snag my fingers on the jacket lining. It’s not an easy thing to achieve which means my thief was either very skilled or very lucky. 

That button cost me my phone but more importantly my decision to get ratted and then wander around on my own at half past bastard in the morning had, like the proverb For Want Of A Nail, led to greater things going wrong. Had I not been that drunk I would have found the bus stop. Had I found the bus stop I wouldn’t have been wandering around with my phone out. Had I been sober I would have simply moved away quickly, or even run, when the bloke walked up. Had I been less drunk I would have done up that third button.

All the training in the world, all that time spent doing gradings and learning about avoidance, de-escalation and fighting techniques…was meaningless because I was so inebriated. 

I know an E5 Krav Maga instructor and told him this story. He said that this kind of thing is one reason he doesn’t drink alcohol at all. 

It only took the smallest of errors for all that misery to occur and what scared me the most was that my training, mindset and skills were negated completely. The third button was undone because I wasn’t aware it could have prevented this crime and above all it made me realise that.

No matter how hard you train.

How strong you are.

How determined you feel.

How good you might be.

None of that will matter if you are

attacked when you are drunk.

** Imagine throwing an aquaphobe in the Arctic ocean...and then seeing them swim back.

Yellow

Now…I am a fairly cynical person most of the time. Having been bullied for years both as a child and adolescent, I have an attuned sense of what’s going on around me and in later life I worked for just over 3 years as a police officer. These two factors, plus training in Krav Maga mean that I was usually in a state of alertness for most of the day. This used to annoy the shit out of a friend of mine in the UK who pointed out that I was unable to relax over a beer as my eyes were constantly checking the room for possible danger and/ or seeing other people as a potential threat (no doubt exacerbated by alcohol).

I have for years tried to avoid being a slave to technology in public, because that can lead to unpredictability and horrid stuff. I worked as a postman for 4 years and zoned out in the job a lot, mainly because it was dull, and I would listen to music on a pair of headphones. However I would double up on other senses in order to try to compensate for my lack of ears while pushing my mail wagon around.

I’m also a keen cyclist and have cycled in both central London and Rome. Both these cities are fairly intense and stressful for bicycle enthusiasts and my senses were attuned at all times to what was going on. I learned in London to “ride assertively AND defensively” and would be hyper aware as I navigated through Elephant & Castle or via Cristoforo Columbo (the former is a dog’s arse of urban design, the latter a notorious link road from Rome to EUR that has a LOT of motor accidents on it). By being constantly aware of what was going on, and more importantly what MIGHT happen, I never had an accident, although I witnessed several.

The way I lived my life on a daily basis was in a heightened state, but the problem was that this became anxiety or even paranoia due to my inability to relax. 

Recently I heard about a wonderful yet simplistic thing called the Cooper Colour Code.

This code goes white, yellow, orange, red and dictates the state of mental awareness that we should be in on a daily basis at all times.

To break it down…

White means no awareness of anything other than what you are either looking at or thinking about. You should only be in White when you are asleep.

Yellow is a state of awareness of what’s around you at all times.You are focussing on everything yet this ISN’T paranoia. It merely allows you to process the world you are passing through as things happen rather than…

Orange, which is that something MIGHT happen in a second or two, and you need to prep yourself because you might move to…

Red, which basically means the something negative is now happening.

Too many people are in White mode when they are NOT asleep. 

We’ve all seen it. The woman on the underground with headphones in, texting and her bag to the rear. Blind, deaf and dumb. The two guys talking while walking and paying no regard to the people around or ahead them. 

I looked at what the colour code was and it basically said that Yellow is the state we should all be in all the time while awake, and (and here’s the beautiful bit) if you remain in Yellow, you will only usually have to rise to Orange and rarely to Red.

To explain…

You are conscious of your surroundings. You are behind the safety line as the train pulls in to the Metro station at Circus Maximus in Rome. You get on and check who is either side of that empty seat. You sit, and because you want to read your book you put your bag either on your lap or between your feet. You have the book at an angle so that you can use your peripheral vision and all’s well.

Then…

Someone moves and stands next to you BUT they are a little close and there’s no reason for it as the carriage is not full. Because you are in Yellow mode you spot this quickly and reposition yourself slightly to create more personal space. You have just reacted in Orange mode. However the person moves into your personal space again so you simply get up and move. You’ve avoided going into Red mode by being alert AND reacting to a POTENTIAL problem before it could happen.

The good thing about this, is that it tapped into my existing behaviour, but cut out the stress and paranoid delusions that went with it. I cycle in a constant state of Yellow yet no longer believe anyone in a car is a potential arsehole. Similarly I use public transport in a more relaxed frame of mind because I know where my stuff is, I’ve padlocked my zips together on my backpack, my wallet & phone are in a zippable inside pocket, and my bag is carried to the front like a kangaroo’s joey, when in crowded places.

Various armies apparently use this code, with some adding Black to the list, meaning that something lethal has just happened. But that’s a little too dramatic…

By using this code I feel a little more prepared each day and have noticed that I’m less inclined to forget things or not know what I have on me when I come to lock up my bike. I know where the pump is, because I Yellowed its existence earlier by noting that I might need to change a puncture. I remember where my waterproof jacket and trousers are because I had Yellowed them into my backpack before setting off.

I know this works because 2 weeks ago I was cycling to the Decathlon sports shop nearby in Rome, and a car was coming out of an exit road on an intercept path. I guessed he might not have seen me so Yellow became Orange and I slowed down. Sure enough, the cunt was texting on his phone and had I not seen him and allowed for it, he would have hit me.

My torrent of verbal abuse probably wasn’t understood as it was in English.